Mecatheque
Scientific and technical publications
Acoustic emission testing –a new way to evaluate an acoustic emission instrumentation : the ‘cats’ methodology
Acoustic Emission (AE) is nowdays widely used in the world, in order to evaluate the integrity of many types of structures, such as pressure vessels, reactors, storage tanks, concrete structures, Aerospace structures, … Several regulatory rules exist for acoustic emission testing (AT) around the world and allow AE testing based on two operational modes (zonal location and planar source location methods). However, the different regulation texts have not always the same rules, the same requirements, and then, can lead to very different results.
The method presented in this paper, called CATS, has been developed by the author, based on its knowledge and experience, to be a universal tool that can evaluate any configuration of Acoustic Emission Testing (a structure, an array of sensors, attenuation characteristics, data acquisition characteristics, …), from a same methodology.
This tool/methodology should help all the users of this technique (AT engineers, technicians, customers, regulatory body, …) to measure, in a numerical scale, the degree of performance of an Acoustic Emission Testing. Then, it will give a clear view on what we can detect, and where (the degree of coverage of a structure), …
This tool, called ‘CATS’ is described below, and necessitates :
- The characteristics of the structure controlled by AE,
- The characteristics of the sensor’s mesh,
- The characteristics of the instrumentation,
- The type of AE source to be detected.
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Acoustic emission testing –a new way to evaluate an acoustic emission instrumentation : the ‘cats’ methodology
