Waveforms of acoustic emission (AE) events come close and sometimes overlap each other when AE activity is very high. Conventional AE measurement systems which handle discrete AE events are not suitable for this situation because miss-detection of AE event occurs frequently. A new AE measurement system named as Continuous Wave Memory (CWM) was developed to solve this problem by recording the AE waveforms continuously to hard disks for several hours throughout the testing time. This new system enabled multiple analysis of one waveform with different filtering parameters. Short time Fourier transform (STFT) gave the time–frequency–magnitude characteristic of continuous AE waveforms and useful information for evaluation of degradation of materials. In this study, the degradation of ceramic fiber mat during cyclic compression test and the effect of binder-addition were evaluated by this new system. STFT results clearly showed the classification of degradation of the mat; breakage of fibers was the main source in the early compression cycles and sporadic friction between fibers became the main source of AE in the later compression cycles. The effect of organic binder to prevent the degradation of the mat was also estimated. It was observed that the friction signal disappeared and the breakage signal weakened in the binder-added specimens. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.I-MRA2007850

A beamforming array technique with four sensors is applied to a cylindrical geometry for detecting point of impact. A linear array of acoustic sensors attached to the plate record the waveforms of Lamb waves generated at the impact point with individual time delay. A beamforming technique in conjunction with an optimization scheme that incorporates the direction dependent guided Lamb wave speed in cylindrical plates is developed. The optimization is carried out using the experimentally obtained wave speed as a function of propagation direction. The maximum value in the beamforming plot corresponds to the predicted point of impact. The proposed technique is experimentally verified by comparing the predicted points with the exact points of impact on a cylindrical aluminum plate and a cylindrical composite shell. For randomly chosen points of impact the beamforming technique successfully predicts the location of the acoustic source.

An accurate evaluation of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in 13Cr martensitic stainless steel (MSS) is still missing due to the lack of an in-situ insight into the process evolution and full characterization of the corrosion morphology. In this work, two main regimes involved in the SCC progression, including localized corrosion and cracking, were comparatively studied using in-situ acoustic emission (AE) monitoring and three-dimensional (3D) X-ray computed tomography (XCT) scanning. The stress corrosion tests were conducted with u-bent smooth specimens subjected to a single droplet of 1 μL 1% neutral NaCl solution. Localized corrosion and cracking evolution were controlled in tempered and quenched steel specimens, respectively. From XCT scanning, localized corrosion was featured by an irregular corrosion pit with deposited corrosion products containing cracks. The single dominant SCC crack was observed to initiate from corrosion pit and propagate with a 3D tortuous and discontinuous morphology. AE signals were detected in both cases. Correlated with in-situ observations and clustering analysis, source identification of AE signals was proposed. AE signals during localized corrosion were assessed to be mainly from cracking within the deposited corrosion products. Comparatively, hydrogen-bubble evolution, plastic deformation, and crack-branches coalescence were proposed as the AE sources of cracking evolution.

Numerous cracks can be observed in the top coat of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) deposited by the atmospheric plasma spraying (APS) method. These cracks can be classified into vertical and horizontal ones and they have opposite impact on the properties of TBCs. Vertical cracks reduce the residual stress in the top coat and provide strain tolerance. On the contrary, horizontal cracks trigger delamination of the top coat. However, monitoring methods of cracks generation during APS are rare even though they are strongly desired. Therefore, an in situ, non-contact and non-destructive evaluation method for this objective was developed in this study with the laser acoustic emission (AE) technique by using laser interferometers as a sensor. More AE events could be detected by introducing an improved noise reduction filter and AE event detection procedures with multiple thresholds. Generation of vertical cracks was successfully separated from horizontal cracks by a newly introduced scanning pattern of a plasma torch. Thus, generation of vertical cracks was detected with certainty by this monitoring method because AE events were detected only during spraying and a positive correlation was observed between the development degree of vertical cracks and the total AE energy in one experiment.