Acoustic emissions applications on the NASA space station

Abstract

The space station is an internally pressurized container carrying inside it everything necessary to support human life in space. Since the shell of the space station contains numerous penetrations it will always be susceptible to seal failure, and when in orbit it will also be exposed to impacts from meteoroids and debris. Although designed to minimize the effects of impacts, damage which breaches the shell threatens the lives of the astronauts. Even small penetrations may require an unacceptable amount of time and effort to locate if a manual scan is necessary. Monitoring under these conditions is best done with acoustic emission (AE), which can be configured as a continuous, remote, and operator-independent monitoring system capable of detecting and locating large and small damage sources.