Acoustic emission source localization in thin metallic plates: A single-sensor approach based on multimodal edge...

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Structural Health Monitoring
• Acoustics

Background:

• Acoustic emission (AE) is a crucial technique for structural health monitoring.
• Accurate source localization is essential for effective AE analysis.
• Existing methods often struggle with complex boundary conditions or require multiple sensors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel AE source localization technique for isotropic plates with reflecting boundaries.
• To enable AE source identification using a single sensor, eliminating blind spots.
• To validate the proposed method through experimental testing.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and Lamb wave dispersion curves for distance estimation (modal acoustic emission).
• Developing an analytical model to simulate edge-reflected waves based on estimated distances.
• Employing waveform correlation between experimental and simulated data for source localization.

Main Results:

• Successful localization of acoustic emission sources on an aluminum plate.
• Demonstration of the method's ability to handle reflecting boundaries.
• Achieved promising localization accuracy, with reported statistics on localization errors.

Conclusions:

• The proposed single-sensor AE localization approach effectively utilizes multimodal edge reflections.
• This method offers a promising solution for AE source identification in plate-like structures with reflecting boundaries.
• The technique shows potential for enhanced structural health monitoring applications.