Affiliations: [a] State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China | [b] College of Aerospace Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Gang Yan, State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, No. 29 Yudao Street, Nanjing 210016, Jiangsu, China. E-mail:yangang@nuaa.edu.cn
Abstract: This paper proposes a probabilistic approach to localize acoustic emission (AE) source in plate-like structures using particle filter (PF) with consideration of uncertainties from modeling error and measurement noise. The AE signals acquired by piezoelectric sensors are first processed by a complex wavelet transform to extract the time of arrival (TOA) information. Then localization of the AE source is formulated as a Bayesian state estimation problem with the source location and the wave velocity as unknown state parameters. A PF procedure is developed to iteratively estimate the unknown parameters simultaneously by using the TOA data. Experimental studies on a stiffened aluminum panel with AE events simulated by pensile lead breaks (PLBs) are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the PF-based AE localization method.
