Acoustic Testing
What is acoustic testing
• Acoustic emission is the technical term for the noise emitted by materials
and structures when they are subjected to stress.
• Types of stresses can be mechanical, thermal or chemical.
• This emission is caused by the rapid release of energy within a material due
to events such as crack initiation and growth, crack opening and closure,
dislocation movement, twinning, and phase transformation in monolithic
materials and fiber breakage and fiber, matrix debonding in composites.
• Acoustic emission (AE) testing is a non-destructive testing
(NDT) technique that detects and monitors the release of ultrasonic
stress waves from localized sources when a material deforms under
stress.
Principal
• Acoustic Emission (AE) refers to the generation of transient elastic
waves produced by a sudden redistribution of stress in a material.
• When a structure is subjected to an external stimulus (change in
pressure, load, or temperature), localized sources trigger the release
of energy, in the form of stress waves, which propagate to the surface
and are recorded by sensors.
How the acoustic testing is done(process)
• Acoustic emission testing works by mounting small sensors onto a
component under test.
• The sensors convert the stress waves into electrical signals, which are
relayed to an acquisition PC for processing.
• The waves are captured when the component is submitted to an external
stimulus, such as high pressures, loads or temperatures.
• As the damage grows in the component, there is a greater release of
energy.
• The rates in which the acoustic emission is detected, the activity, and the
intensity of the acoustic emission, the loudness, are monitored and used
for assessing structural integrity and for health monitoring of components.
Method of testing
• There are two AE testing methods: Transient and Continuous.
• The transient method captures AE bursts that exceed a threshold (loudness
level) and extract features such as peak amplitude, signal energy and
duration of the burst. These features are then used to assess the condition
of the component under test. This method is well suited for testing
structures for defects such as cracks.
• The continuous method captures all AE within a set time period, for
example 1/10th of a second. Then, features such as average signal level and
root-mean squared (RMS) values are then extracted. This method is well
suited to applications where there is a lot of background AE or AE
amplitude is low, for example when testing gearboxes or detecting leaks.
Advantages
Acoustic emission has many advantages over other methods. These include:
• Ability to detect a range of damage mechanisms including, but not limited to, fibre breakages,
friction, impacts, cracking, delamination and corrosion in their early stages, before they become
significant issues
• Can be conducted during operation, during qualification (proof) testing or development testing
• Can locate damage sources and can be differentiate these based on acoustic signatures
• Global monitoring of a structure
• Assesses the structure or machine under real operational conditions
• Operational in hazardous environments, including high temperatures, high pressures
and corrosive and nuclear environments
• Can be conducted remotely
• Can detect damages in defects that are difficult to access with conventional non-destructive
testing techniques
Disadvantages
•Limited to assessing structural integrity or machine health by
locating issues,
further inspection is usually required to fully diagnose issues
•Cannot detect defects that may be present, but that do not move
or grow
•Can be slower than other non-destructive testing techniques
Applications
Acoustic emission can be applied to a range of applications and materials. These include:
Structures
• Concrete structures such as bridges and buildings
• Metallic structures such as pressure vessels, pipelines, storage tanks, aircraft structures and steel
cables
• Composite structures such as aircraft structures, motorsport structures and composite beams
Machines
• Rotating machinery such as detecting early wear in bearings and gearboxes
• Electrical machinery such as detecting partial discharge in transformers and bushings
Processes
• Additive manufacturing for assessing build quality during build
• Leak detection in pipelines and pressure systems
• Particle impacts
• Frictional processes
X Ray diffraction:
X-ray diffraction is a standard method for determining the
presence or absence of crystallographic order in materials. It is
often used to obtain a variety of other structural information
regarding internal stress and defects in a crystal, or multiple
crystallographic phases in composite materials.
XRD principal
• X-ray diffraction is based on constructive interference of monochromatic X-rays and a
crystalline sample.
• These X-rays are generated by a cathode ray tube, filtered to produce monochromatic
radiation, collimated to concentrate, and directed toward the sample.
• When a monochromatic x-ray incident occurs on a crystal. The atomic electrons in the
Crystal are sent into vibration. With the same frequency as that of the frequency of the
incident ray and are accelerated.
• These Accelerated electrons then emit the radiation of the same frequency as that of
incident x-rays in all directions.
• In the majority of directions, these waves cancel each other out through destructive
interference.
• however, they add constructively in a few specific directions, as determined by Bragg’s law:
• These radiations may interfere constructively or destructively producing a diffraction
pattern(i.e. maxima and minima) in certain directions.
• The result of X-ray diffraction plots the intensity of the signal for various angles of diffraction
at their respective two theta positions. The two theta positions correspond to a certain
spacing between the crystals or atoms in the samples, determined by the angle of diffraction
from the incident x-ray beam sent into the sample. The intensity of the peaks is related to
the amount of molecules in that phase or with that spacing. The greater the intensity of the
peak, the greater the amount of crystals or molecules with that distinct spacing.
• The width of the peaks is inversely proportional to the crystal size. A thinner peak
corresponds to a bigger crystal. A broader peak means that there may be a smaller crystal,
defect in the crystalline structure, or that the sample might be amorphous in nature, a solid
lacking perfect crystallinity. For smaller samples, the patterns determined using XRD analysis
can be used to determine a sample’s composition. There is a large database of elements,
compounds, and minerals that contain the diffraction patterns for elements, compounds,
and minerals. The pattern for an unknown compound can be compared to the literature and
experimentally determined values to verify the identity of an element, matching both the
location, width, and relative heights of the diffraction patterns.
Derivation of Bragg’s Law
• Consider the following figure of beams in which the phases of the
beams coincide when the incident angle is equal to the reflecting
angle. The incident beams are parallel to each other until they
reach point z. When they are at point z, they strike the surface and
travel upwards. At point B, the second beam scatters. AB + BC is
the distance travelled by the second beam. The extra distance is
known as the integral multiple of the wavelength.
• nλ = AB + BC
• We also know that AB = BC
• nλ = 2AB (equation 1)
• d is the hypotenuse of the right triangle Abz.
Ab is the opposite of the angle θ.
• AB = d sinθ (equation 2)
• Substituting equation 2 in equation 1
• nλ = 2d sinθ
• The above equation is Bragg’s law expression.
