Acoustic emission for fracture studies using moment tensor analysis

Abstract

Acoustic emission (AE) has been widely employed for fracture studies because of its high sensitivity to crack initiation and growth. A moment tensor analysis based on the measurement of P-wave amplitudes of detected AE waveforms is especially useful for quantitative evaluation of fractures in terms of crack orientation, direction of crack motions and crack type. A quantitative comparison between prediction and actual cracks has been made to validate the method. This paper deals with AE applications for fracture studies using moment tensor analysis. Effectiveness of the analysis in laboratory tests and field applications is demonstrated.