Abstract
Acoustic emission (AE) has been used to continuously monitor fatigue critical zones in a Mirage aircraft undergoing full-scale fatigue testing, in order to establish the feasibility of detecting AE due to crack growth during flight. The major problem was to distinguish crack growth from the many spurious AE sources. Thus, to discriminate between AE due to different sources, the activity in each zone was analysed in terms of its load-cycle dependence. Regions on the load cycle where AE due to fatigue crack growth was most likely to occur were identified, and a correlation was found between crack growth and relatively high AE activity in this region. Active cracks deeper than 0.3–0.6 mm were detected, although the size of the AE indication was not proportional to the cracking activity and zoning calibration studies had to be taken into account. No significant cracks were missed.
Published Version
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