Acoustic Emission Source Localization in Anisotropic Structures Through Nonlinear Kalman Filtering Estimation

Abstract

This article presents a structural health monitoring (SHM) method based on two well-known nonlinear Kalman filtering algorithms, Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) and Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to estimate acoustic emission (AE) source location in anisotropic plate-like structures. To validate the proposed method experimental tests are carried out on a carbon-fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite panel instrumented with a sparse array of eight piezoelectric transducers arranged in four clusters. AE sources are simulated using an instrumented piezoelectric impulse hammer. In order to compare the two algorithms two performance metrics are used: 1) accuracy of AE source localization and 2) computational time. The accuracy and computational efficiency of the proposed framework demonstrate its potential application for SHM of anisotropic plate-like structures.