Influence of boundary conditions on acoustic emission propagation characteristics of Zelkova schneideriana

Abstract

To study the propagation characteristics of acoustic emission signals in Zelkova schneideriana under different boundary conditions, three types of boundary conditions were generated by applying aluminum plates and sound-absorbing cotton on the surface of Zelkova schneideriana specimens. Firstly, the sudden and continuous acoustic emission (AE) sources were simulated by PLB (pencil–lead break) tests and signal generator on the specimen surface, and the AE signals were collected by 5 sensors equally spaced on the surface of the specimen, and the sampling frequency was set to 500 kHz. Then, the detailed signals of different frequency bands were obtained by wavelet decomposition, and TDOA (the time difference of arrival) and correlation analysis method were used to calculate the time difference of longitudinal wave and surface transverse wave and the corresponding propagation velocity, respectively. Finally, the pulse trains with different energy levels generated by the signal generator were used as AE sources to study the attenuation law of AE signal energy with distance under different boundary conditions. The results show that the boundary changes can lead to a significant increase in the surface transverse wave velocity, and have no significant effect on the longitudinal wave velocity. At the same time, the energy attenuation of surface and longitudinal waves is faster after the aluminum plate and sound-absorbing cotton are affixed, and the distance of longitudinal waves attenuation to 90% is reduced from 186 to 139 mm, and the distance of surface transverse waves propagation is reduced from 312 to 226 mm.