Experimental Research on Rapid Localization of Acoustic Source in a Cylindrical Shell Structure without Knowledge of the Velocity Profile.

Jia Fu,Shenxin Yin,Tribikram Kundu,Zhiwen Cui

doi:10.3390/s21020511

Abstract

Acoustic source localization in a large pressure vessel or a storage tank-type cylindrical structure is important in preventing structural failure. However, this can be challenging, especially for cylindrical pressure vessels and tanks that are made of anisotropic materials. The large area of the cylindrical structure often requires a substantial number of sensors to locate the acoustic source. This paper first applies conventional acoustic source localization techniques developed for the isotropic, flat plate-type structures to cylindrical structures. The experimental results show that the conventional acoustic source localization technique is not very accurate for source localization on cylindrical container surfaces. Then, the L-shaped sensor cluster technique is applied to the cylindrical surface of the pressure vessel, and the experimental results prove the applicability of using this technique. Finally, the arbitrary triangle-shaped sensor clusters are attached to the surface of the cylindrical structure to locate the acoustic source. The experimental results show that the two acoustic source localization techniques using sensor clusters can be used to monitor the location of acoustic sources on the surface of anisotropic cylindrical vessels, using a small number of sensors. The arbitrarily triangle-shaped sensors can be arbitrarily placed in a cluster on the surface of the cylindrical vessel. The results presented in this paper provide a theoretical and experimental basis for the surface acoustic source localization method for a cylindrical pressure vessel and lay a theoretical foundation for its application.

Highlights

Acoustic source localization (ASL) technology plays an indispensable role in the application of nondestructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM) [1]
This paper extends the acoustic source localization techniques developed for flat plate-type structures to cylindrical structures and verifies the technique experimentally
The experimental results show that the average error of the L-shaped time difference positioning technique and arbitrary triangularshaped sensor clusters is smaller than the localization method, which only applies to the isotropic case, as used above

Summary

Introduction

Acoustic source localization (ASL) technology plays an indispensable role in the application of nondestructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM) [1]. Nakatani et al [18] applied a beamforming array technique with four sensors to a cylindrical geometry to detect the point of impact These techniques required the velocity distribution information in advance for the anisotropic structure. As an extended work of [31], this paper will use L-shaped sensor clusters for source localization in an anisotropic cylindrical vessel. The experimental results verify that these two methods can reliably predict the acoustic source position on the surface of a cylindrical structure, without a priori knowledge of the wave speed in that structure. It provides a new, alternative technique for ASL on cylindrical pressure vessels and containers

L-Shaped Sensor Cluster and Time Difference Positioning Technique

Arbitrary Triangular Cluster for a New Time Difference Positioning Technique

Experimental Investigation

Theposition actual acoustic source position the are shown inresults

11. The error of the experimental waserror

Conclusions