SNR Improvement of AE Signal for Detection of Gas Leak from Tubes under Vibratory Environment

Detection of gas leak from a tube is a very important issue in the quality control of machines such as the heat exchanger of an air-conditioner, because leakage of operating gas directly reduces the performance of machines. The acoustic emission (AE) method is a common way to detect leak of gas, however its application under the environment of mechanical vibration is restricted since most AE detectors are very sensitive to external vibration noise. In order to overcome this problem, we propose a method based on the mode analysis of the Lamb wave. In this method, the dominant Lamb mode and its frequency are found first, and then a proper band-pass filter is used to retain only this frequency component. In this way, we could improve the SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) of AE signal generated by gas leak from the tube even under vibratory environment.