Damage-induced acoustic emission source monitoring in a honeycomb sandwich composite structure

Abstract A coordinated semi-analytical, finite element, and experimental analysis of damage induced acoustic emission (AE) wave propagation and source monitoring in a honeycomb sandwich composite structure (HSCS) have been carried out. Towards this, a global matrix method based two-dimensional (2D) semi-analytical formulation is first applied to obtain the AE response and dispersion characteristics in the HSCS. The finite element simulation of AE-wave propagation in the HSCS is then carried out using different AE-sensor network configurations. Eventually, the damage source locations are efficiently identified by applying a source localization algorithm, which uses the registered AE signals from the sensor networks. In order to verify the robustness of the proposed damage source monitoring technique, the localization is further broadened for randomly selected multiple damage source locations for each sensor network configuration. The obtained results distinctly represent the efficiency of the proposed online monitoring strategy for localizing the damage-source in such complex and advanced structures. Moreover, it is shown that the proposed damage source monitoring technique is reliable and independent of sensor positions.