Online acoustic emission source localization in concrete structures using iterative and evolutionary algorithms

This study is motivated by the need to develop an efficient online structural health monitoring (SHM) framework to accurately localize damage induced acoustic emission (AE) sources in concrete structures. Experimental studies are carried out in concrete slabs considering pencil lead break (PLB) as artificial damage source to initialize acoustic emission (AE) waves. A simplified yet robust Iterative Planar Source (IPS) localization algorithm based on arrival time (ToA) is proposed first to identify arbitrarily selected several damage source locations for (1) rectangular (2)circular, and (3) zig-zag distributed AE sensor network arrangements. The results of the proposed localization algorithm are then compared with those obtained from an evolutionary particle-swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for each sensor network arrangement to assess the performance of the AE source monitoring strategy. It is found that the zig-zag arrangement of the distributed AE sensors is the most efficient sensor network arrangement for damage source localization. The obtained results clearly represent the accuracy and robustness of the proposed online monitoring framework for localizing damage induced acoustic emission sources in concrete structures without extensive manual intervention.