Non-Destructive Acoustical Rock Bolt Testing System with Intelligent Filtering in Salt Mine ‘Wieliczka’

This article presents the application of a self-excited acoustic SAS system for non-destructive testing (NDT) for roof-bolt housings in laboratory and real mine conditions. The proposed system with a filtering mechanism was applied to the J64-27 composite anchors. The conducted tests allowed successful confirmation of the usefulness of the system in the detection of rod defects, damage of the mechanism coupling the anchor to the rock mass and testing of the stress state of the anchor itself. The proposed filtering system allowed eliminating the effect of jump change of frequency in the limit cycle of self-excited system. The proposed method is a novel solution for safety diagnostics of bolt housings in mining applications.