Project Results

I am so excited that the outcome of the research has been published a peer-reviewed paper in a top-tier journal. It brings a new knowledge of science to the community regarding the multiphysics simulation of acoustic emissions as well as the experimental measurements.

About This Project

Engineering structures have a damage monitoring system for safe and reliable performance. This project proposes an experimental and multiphysics simulation of a novel Acoustic Emission (AE) technique for damage monitoring in these structures. While the conventional methods do a delayed monitoring and use many actuators, AE monitoring gives the real-time damage information without any actuator. Thus, AE provides precise damage monitoring and saves the cost and power consumption of the actuators.

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What is the context of this research?

This project will address the research question: “Can acoustic emissions tell us the damage state at safety-critical situations on an engineering structure?”

A new and innovative approach to assessing the state of the modern structures efficiently and inexpensively is the key of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). The acoustic emission (AE) is a rapid release of stress waves from any material state change in the structure. Conventional methods use excitation sources called actuators to assess the damage state in a structure. This novel approach would use acoustic emissions from the structure for diagnosis and prognosis without any actuators; thus, it could save the associated cost, power consumption and complex circuit requirement of the external sources/actuators.

What is the significance of this project?

The US spends more than $200 billion each year for the maintenance of bridge structures, plant equipment and facilities. This novel AE technology could directly be applied to the monitoring of large structures like bridges, aircrafts, high-rise buildings inexpensively, but efficiently. The proper and efficient detection of damage makes the structures safer for the public. In this project, the feasibility of this AE technology will be studied by performing experiments and multiphysics simulations. This is a low cost and less complicated technique than conventional methods. A quantitative criteria for AE sensing will provide efficient diagnosis and prognosis of structural damage.

What are the goals of the project?

An in-situ AE-fatigue experiment will be designed to "listen to the crack" by the measurement of acoustic emissions. These emissions will be used to find the critical length of the crack that will lead the catastrophic failure of the structure. Aircraft-grade aluminum material will be used to make the samples for the experiment. Fatigue loading, commonly encountered in practice, for engineering structures will be applied to the samples. The multiphysics simulation will provide the optimum positions of the AE sensors used in the experiments, help to interpret the AE signals and understand the structural communication. Thus, a combination of efficient experiment and simulation for better AE sensing is the main goal of this project.