Acoustic Emission Wave Velocity Attenuation of Concrete and Its Application in Crack Localization

Abstract

The accurate localization of an acoustic emission (AE) source is a vital aspect of AE nondestructive testing technology. A model of wave velocity attenuation caused by the extension of transmission distance is established to analyze the attenuation of AE wave velocities in concrete and thus improve the acoustic source localization accuracy from the perspective of modified velocity. In combination with the exhaustive and region localization methods, a region exhaustive localization method is established based on the modified wave velocity. The results indicate that the smaller the water–cement ratio, the larger the reference wave velocity, and the spatially dependent attenuation of wave velocity increase. Moreover, the larger the aggregate particle size, the larger the reference wave velocity, and the greater the attenuation of wave velocity with distance. For a propagation distance of 1000 mm, the AE wave velocity attenuation exceeds 50% compared with the AE velocity. The optimized localization method reduces the number of nodes calculated, thus improving the method’s accuracy when used for localization.