Application of a new acoustic emission monitoring technique to nontraditional machining

Acoustic emission (AE) sensing techniques have been found to be practical for both conventional and nontraditional manufacturing processes because of high reliability, low cost and easy installation. Traditional AE techniques include the use of the root mean square (RMS) voltage, zero crossing rate, rise time, pulse width, Kurtosis and frequency analysis of the signal. Limitations have been reported when using these methods for on-line control. Potential limiting factors include the proper selection of the integration time constant for RMS measurement, and the need for high speed, data intensive calculations. This paper reports on the use of a new AE technique which monitors specific high and low frequency components of the AE signal. The advantages of this technique are demonstrated for two nontraditional machining methods: abrasive flow machining (AFM) and abrasive electrodischarge grinding (AEDG).