Numerical simulation and experiments of structural acoustic emission

CHEN Wei-bo1, ZHONG Shun-cong1,2,3*, ZHU Zhi-bin4,5, FU Xi-bin5

(1. School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350108, China;

2.Fujian Key Laboratory of Medical Instrument and Pharmaceutical Fechnology, Fuzhou 350002, China; 

3.Key Laboratory of Safety Science of Pressurized System of Ministry of Education, East China University of

Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China;  4.School of Chemical Engineering, Fuzhou University,

Fuzhou 350108, China; 5. Xiamen Special Equipment Inspection Institute, Xiamen 361000, China)

Abstract: Transient elastic waves produced by acoustic emission sources could generate acoustic emission signals with various frequencies and modals in propagation, which lead to some difficulties using acoustic emission in non-destructive testing. Aiming at investigating the propagation of acoustic emission signal, finite element method was used to simulate the propagation of acoustic emission signals in thin aluminum and the reflection waves from structure boundary. Time-domain waveform of acoustic emission was obtained and its propagation characteristics could be extracted from this model. Pencil-lead breaks system was built to simulate and collect the acoustics emission signal. The simulation results well agreed with the one obtained from pencil-lead breaks experiments. The results indicate that finite element numerical method can be an effective method to analyze the propagation of acoustic emission. It provides the numerical model for acoustics emission based structural damage detection and precise theoretical foundations of using acoustic emission in non-destructive testing.

Key words: acoustic emission(AE); finite element method; pencil-lead break