Non-Destructive Testing for Cavity Damages in Automated Machines Based on Acoustic Emission Tomography

Damage detection is important for the maintenance of automated machines. General non-destructive testing techniques require static equipment and complex analysis processes, which restricts the maintenance of automated machines. Therefore, this paper proposes an acoustic emission (AE) tomography method for detecting cavity damage in automated machines, combining the fast sweeping method (FSM) and the limited-memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (L-BFGS) method. This approach overcomes the limitations of real-time AE detection for cavity damage in continuous and homogeneous materials. The proposed method has been applied in numerical and laboratory experiments to validate its feasibility. The results show that the inversed low-velocity regions correspond to the actual cavity regions, and the sources of cavity damage can be effectively detected. This paper provides a new perspective for AE testing technologies, and also lays the foundation for other non-destructive testing techniques, in terms of cavity damage detection.