AE source on-line localization on material with unknown acoustic wave propagation velocity

Abstract

The ability to locate the defects in materials is one of the major attrations of the acoustic emission(AE) technique. The most conventional method for planar AE source localization is to place three or more AE sensors on the plate and to determine the source position by measuring the differences in the arrival times of the AE wave at the sensors, which is called as triangulation method. But this method can not be applied in the material of which elastic wave propagtion velocity is not known. In this paper, we propose two methods, vector method and error minimization method, for AE source location on the material with unknown AE wave velocity. In this method, it is not needed to know the propagation velocity previously, that is, we can apply this method to arbitrary material of which properties are not known exactly. Also, in this paper, the robustness to the error in the measurement of time differences are discussed for both methods. Finally, in order to evaluate the actual performances, experiments using a pencil lead break as the AE source were carried out on the aluminum plate.