Acoustic emission source location on a cylindrical shell structure through grouped sensors based analytical solution and data field theory

Cylindrical shell structures are widely used in the fields of mining engineering, tunneling engineering and material structures, where acoustic emission (AE) source location plays an important role in monitoring engineering fractures. The commonly used AE source location method for cylindrical shell structures has several shortcomings. First, it must select the shortest ray path from multiple possible ray paths, making it hard to derive an analytical solution and is inconvenient for iterative solutions. Moreover, a local optimal solution may be obtained through a single time event location. To address these issues, we propose an AE source location method, which combines grouped sensors based analytical solution and data field theory. Synthetic tests of 18,360 generated events with Gaussian noises (mean value = 0us, standard deviation = 2.5us) included for P-wave travel time show an average location error within 2 cm. Furthermore, the average location error of 53 pencil-lead breaks is 2.43 cm. Moreover, the results verify that it is necessary to remove the P-wave arrival time system error between sensors prior to AE event location. In conclusion, the proposed analytical solution is helpful for rapid AE location on a cylindrical shell structure, and the application of data field can overcome the local optimal problem of a single time location.