# Intelligent location of simultaneously active acoustic emission sources: Part I

## TL;DR

This paper introduces an intelligent acoustic emission source locator using a neural network that accurately identifies active sources on complex aircraft structures, offering a more general alternative to traditional triangulation methods.

## Contribution

The paper presents a novel neural network-based locator that improves non-destructive testing accuracy without requiring sonic ray path analysis.

## Key findings

- Locator accuracy depends on sound velocity, attenuation, and specimen properties.
- Performance is comparable to conventional triangulation.
- Method is more general and applicable to complex structures.

## Abstract

The intelligent acoustic emission locator is described in Part I, while Part II discusses blind source separation, time delay estimation and location of two simultaneously active continuous acoustic emission sources. The location of acoustic emission on complicated aircraft frame structures is a difficult problem of non-destructive testing. This article describes an intelligent acoustic emission source locator. The intelligent locator comprises a sensor antenna and a general regression neural network, which solves the location problem based on learning from examples. Locator performance was tested on different test specimens. Tests have shown that the accuracy of location depends on sound velocity and attenuation in the specimen, the dimensions of the tested area, and the properties of stored data. The location accuracy achieved by the intelligent locator is comparable to that obtained by the conventional triangulation method, while the applicability of the intelligent locator is more general since analysis of sonic ray paths is avoided. This is a promising method for non-destructive testing of aircraft frame structures by the acoustic emission method.