Evaluation of the acoustic emission 3D localisation accuracy for the mechanical damage monitoring in concrete

One of the main interests of the Acoustic Emission (AE) technique is its capability to detect and localise damage in structures. In this paper, the accuracy of AE sources localisation in concrete is studied. Several methods related to the choice of the onset detection of AE signals and to the location algorithm are evaluated and compared. The results show an important influence of the onset detection method on the location accuracy of AE events. The choice of the minimisation algorithm depends on the desired accuracy and the computation time. A statistical analysis based on the distribution of AE events and energy is presented for the detection of damages and the monitoring of the crack propagation. The comparison of the presented methodology demonstrates comparative results with Digital Image Correlation (DIC)