Improved acoustic emission source location during fatigue and impact events in metallic and composite structures

In order to overcome the difficulties in applying traditional time-of-arrival techniques for locating acoustic emission events in complex structures and materials, a technique termed ‘Delta-t mapping’ was developed. This article presents a significant improvement on this, in which the difficulties in identifying the precise arrival time of an acoustic emission signal are addressed by incorporating the Akaike information criteria. The performance of the time of arrival, the Delta-t mapping and the Akaike information criteria Delta-t mapping techniques is assessed by locating artificial acoustic emission sources, fatigue damage and impact events in aluminium and composite materials, respectively. For all investigations conducted, the improved Akaike information criteria Delta-t technique shows a reduction in average Euclidean source location error irrespective of material or source type. For locating Hsu–Nielsen sources on a complex aluminium specimen, the average source location error (Euclidean) is 32.6 (time of arrival), 5.8 (Delta-t) and 3 mm (Akaike information criteria Delta-t). For locating fatigue damage on the same specimen, the average error is 20.2 (time of arrival), 4.2 (Delta-t) and 3.4 mm (Akaike information criteria Delta-t). For locating Hsu–Nielsen sources on a composite panel, the average error is 19.3 (time of arrival), 18.9 (Delta-t) and 4.2 mm (Akaike information criteria Delta-t). Finally, the Akaike information criteria Delta-t mapping technique had the lowest average error (3.3 mm) when locating impact events when compared with the Delta-t (18.9 mm) and time of arrival (124.7 mm) techniques. Overall, the Akaike information criteria Delta-t mapping technique is the only technique which demonstrates consistently the lowest average source location error (greatest average error of 4.2 mm) when compared with the Delta-t (greatest average error of 18.9 mm) and time of arrival (greatest average error of 124.7 mm) techniques. These results demonstrate that the Akaike information criteria Delta-t mapping technique is a viable option for acoustic emission source location, increasing the accuracy and likelihood of damage detection, irrespective of material, geometry and source type.