PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15886484
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-02
Publication Date: 2018-06
Patent Classification: ["239", "001000"]

Abstract:
With the use of a low cost microphone mounted at each nozzle, a sound signature of the nozzles may be captured and stored to be used as a continuous indicator of any changes in the flow rate of the nozzles. By measuring changes in sound at each nozzle, it is possible to determine the change in flow before a change in pressure manifests into a problem in the system. The change in sound will oftentimes be significant for plugged nozzles, or nozzles that have excessive wear and flow at too high of a rate. The invention has the advantage of being relatively low cost with ceramic microphones, for example, and with little or no moving parts required. A closed loop control system may be included to compensate for nozzle degradation.

Claim (Index 1):
A method for nozzle flow detection comprising:\n discharging a fluid at an outlet of a spray nozzle assembly; using a microphone positioned proximal to the outlet to communicate acoustic data corresponding to the discharge of the fluid at the outlet; holding a calibration measurement in a data structure, the calibration measurement corresponding to a discharge of fluid at the outlet, the calibration measurement being derived from acoustic data provided by the microphone; and receiving a flow measurement corresponding to a discharge of fluid at the outlet, the flow measurement being derived from acoustic data provided by the microphone; and comparing the flow measurement to the calibration measurement to determine an error.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 3.0
- Percentile: 88.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.77215
- Patent Class: 239.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15267471', '12273079', '13410589', '15255548', '13333541']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7605519367591059
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4796105264712105
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7324577957303163
- Mean Citation Score: 131.488446
- Max Citation Score: 175.75173999999996
- Similarity Product: 120.292131454792

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 0
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 0
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test