Assessment of Maximum Sensitivity of Acoustic Emission Technique

Knowledge of the ultimate sensitivity of the acoustic emission (AE) method is useful in studies of the mechanisms of plastic deformation of the structure, the formation and development of micro-, meso- and macro-cracks, as well as continuous processes, such as the outflow of liquids and gases, friction and a number of others. Analysis of literary data on assessment of limit sensitivity at identification of AE sources was carried out. It has been shown that when using standard resonant piezoelectric transducers with a frequency bandwidth of 30 ± 10 kHz, the ultimate sensitivity is the fraction of the nanometer in the displacement of the surface of the object and the unit micron of the size of the microcrack during its formation and hopping development. When testing industrial facilities, in many cases the level of external noise is significantly higher, the detection of defects decreases and amounts to a fraction of a millimeter. However, an increase in the energy and amplitude of AE signals as the defect develops in the vast majority of cases leads to the fact that when a crack reaches dimensions that begin to threaten the strength of the monitored object, AE signals are reliably detected by the equipment. Knowledge of the maximum sensitivity of the AE method makes it possible to compare it with other NDT methods by this parameter.

Ultrasonic Adaptive Detection for Aerospace Components with Varying Thickness

Automatic inspection of microdefects located in the aerospace components is difficult due to the imprecise scanning trajectory, especially for those specimens with varying thickness. In this paper, a new ultrasonic nondestructive testing (NDT) system using the robotic scanning trajectory is constructed for inspecting turbine blades. Additionally, an approach based on the analysis of ultrasonic signals is proposed to calibrate the trajectory; the ultrasonic image based on the threshold function represents the distribution of inner defects when the following gate is used to track the flaw echo. Therefore, the characteristic parameters of the flaw echo signals are easy to be discriminated if the reflection waves are stable in the time domain. Experimental result verified the effective and feasibility of the proposed approach; the distribution of inner defects can be shown with a higher resolution than other NDT methods when robotic orientation is correct at each point of scanning trajectory. Furthermore, the feature signals can be tracked more accurately during the ultrasonic signal processing if the ultrasonic distance was considered as a calibration coefficient of positional matrix. The proposed ultrasonic adaptive detection is adapted to complex geometric structure with a minimum resolution of equivalent diameter of the inner flaw being 0.15 millimeters.

Application of Acoustic Emission in Control of High-Pressure Pipe Overstraining

The article describes the application of AE technique in control and evaluation of the pipe overstraining process. The trials of overstraining were conducted according to a programme of pipe loading with internal pressure, developed and adjusted to the examined pipe material. In the studies two systems of acoustic emission were used, viz. PAC Mistras 2001 and Vallen AMSY. The procedure adopted in the development of evaluation criteria based on an analysis of the recorded acoustic events was described. Next, the criteria of evaluation were presented. The effectiveness of the applied method, the validity of the adopted criteria, and the consistency of the obtained quantitative results were checked during tests performed by other NDT methods. A comparative analysis was made to serve as a complementary tool in final evaluation of the pipe overstraining process done by AE technique.