Plate-Like Structure Damage Acoustic Emission Beamforming Array Technique and Probability-Based Diagnostic Imaging Method

A novel beamforming array technique and probability-based diagnostic imaging method are proposed to determine the acoustic emission (AE) source in plate-like structures. The technique that differs from common beamforming array techniques, in particular a sensor network, is used instead of a linear sensor array, to highlight information on the AE source location in one coordinate system as energy distribution. To reduce the uncertainty, avoid the boundary reflection effect, and ensure the rationality of the signal superposition, a Hilbert transform-based signal processing is applied before the delay-and-sum algorithm and a probability-based diagnostic imaging method is developed for AE source localization. The finite element numerical simulation method and the pencil-lead-broken experiment on aluminum plate are also conducted, and a thin-walled cylinder pipe-like structure is also tested by the pencil-lead-broken experiment to develop the application of the proposed method in various fields. The results indicate that this method is efficient and capable of visually showing the localization results highlighted in the probability images