Acoustic Emission Source Location Based on Signal Features

Abstract:

Good knowledge of acoustic emission (AE) source location is the basic requirement for further damage mechanism characterization. Calculation of the AE source location is mostly based on arrival time differences of the signals recorded by different transducers. Error free arrival time determination is the crucial factor for the localization results accuracy together with the exact elastic wave velocity measurement. In the paper difficulties and limitations of the elastic wave velocity computation are shown. To solve the velocity and the time differences problems, new approach to AE source localization is described. The new method estimates the AE source coordinates using artificial neural network (ANN) processing extracted signal parameters. The ANN do not uses neither arrival time differences nor elastic wave velocities as input data. The new approach advantages are discussed in cases of both numerical and practical experiments. The experiments results are promising for the use of designed localization method in praxis.