• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.45-52
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• 2016

Blast furnaces are crucial equipment for steel production. A typical furnace risks unexpected accidents caused by contraction and expansion of the walls under an environment of high temperature and pressure. In this study, an acoustic emission (AE) monitoring system was tested for evaluating the large-scale structural health of a blast furnace. Based on the growth of shell cracks with the emission of high energy levels, severe damage can be detected by monitoring increases in the AE energy parameter. Using this monitoring system, steel mill operators can establish a maintenance period, in which actual shell cracks can be verified by cross-checking the UT. From this study, we expect that AE systems permit early fault detection for structural health monitoring by establishing evaluation criteria based on the severity of shell cracking.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.9-16
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• 2001

Turning experiments are conducted to investigate characteristics of acoustic emission due to wear of the coated tool. The AE signals are obtained with a sensor attached to tool holder side. Tool states are identified with scanning electron microscopy and optical microscopy. It is demonstrated that the AE signals provide reliable informations about the cutting processes and tool states. Moreover, tool wear can be detected successfully using the AE-RMS.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.165-173
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• 2011

The acoustic emission(AE) technique is a well established method to carry out structural health monitoring(SHM) of large structures. However, the real-time monitoring of the crack growth in the roller coaster support structures is not easy since the vehicle operation produces very large noise as well as crack growth. In this investigation, we present the waveform parameter filtering method to classify acoustic sources in real-time. This method filtrates only the AE hits by the target acoustic source as passing hits in a specific parameter band. According to various acoustic sources, the waveform parameters were measured and analyzed to verify the present filtering method. Also, the AE system employing the waveform parameter filter was manufactured and applied to the roller coaster support structure in an actual amusement park.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.45-51
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• 2004

Boiler tubes in power plants are often leaked due to various material degradations including creep and thermal fatigue damage under severe operating conditions such as high temperature and high pressure over an extended period of time. To monitor and diagnose the tubes on site and in real time, the acoustic emission (AE) technology was applied. We developed an AE leak detection system, and used it to study the variation of AE signal from the on-site tubes in response to the changes in the boiler operation condition and to detect the locations of leakage based on it. Detection of leak was performed by acquiring and evaluating the signals in separate regimes of high and low frequency signal. As a result of these studies, we found that on-line monitoring and detection of leak location for boiler tubes is possible using the developed system. Thus, the system is expected to contribute to the safe operation of power plants, and prevent economic losses due to potential leak.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.43-48
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to show how to eliminate the noises and to obtain the data related with the relationship between AE signal characteristics and mechanical behaviors for the pressure vessel steel. Various kinds of noises are introduced into the AE data in the course of experiments. Accordingly, real AE data have to be obtained after tests. AE test was carried out under four point bending load. Among AE signals, counts and signal strength are used to find out the differences of AE characteristics between the basemetal and weldment. After tests, this paper shows the procedures of filtering the noises against basemetal of the pressure vessel steel to obtain the real data around crack tip. Relationships between plastic zone size and cumulative AE counts are shown also. AE signals were absent within an elastic region, regardless of the specimens. Most of AE signals are produced in the process of plastic deformation. The deformation and fracture modes of basemetal and weldment are quiet different.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.271-279
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• 2006

Acoustic Emission (AE) technology is an effective nondestructive testing for continuous monitoring of defect formation and failures in structural materials. This paper presents a source location model using Acoustic Emission (AE) sensors in a Pre-Stressed Concrete (PSC) beam and the evaluation of the model was performed through lab experiments. 54 AE events were made on the surface of the 5m-PSC beam using a Schmidt Hammer and arrival times were measured with 7AE sensors. The source location f3r each event was estimated using least squares. The results were compared with actual positions and the RMSE (Root Mean Square Errors) was about 2cm.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.72-77
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• 2012

Acoustic emission (AE) is known to be sensitive to fracture process and so it was expected that AE data may propose as a means of monitoring the fracture information. The aim of this study is to analyze the characteristic of AE signal emitted from glass during Vickers indentation. To observe AE characteristics by surface effect, both glass and coating glass were studied. During Vickers indentation loading, AE signal resulted from penny-like crack is detected. During Vickers indentation unloading, AE signal resulted from both radial/median crack and lateral crack is detected. In case of indentation on glass, the emission energy(${\epsilon}$) is found to be approximately proportional to the fourth power of the crack length. In case of indentation on coating glass, the emission energy(${\epsilon}$) is approximately proportional to the crack length.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.7 no.2 s.19
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• pp.48-53
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• 2003

This study is to look at the effect for deformation of carbon steel for high-presure pipe, on the AE signals produced by tensile test. Acoustic emission(AE) has been widely used in various fields because of its extreme sensitivity, dynamic detection ability and location of growing defects. We investigated a relationship failure mode and AE signals by tensile test, From the tensile test, we could divide into four ranges of the failure modes of elastic range, yield range, plastic range before $\sigma$u, plastic range after $\sigma$u. And failure behaviors of elastic range, yield range, plastic range before $\sigma$u, plastic range after $\sigma$u could be evaluated in tensile test by AE counts, accumulation counts and time frequency analysis. It is expected to be basic data that can protect a risk according to tensile test and bending of pipe material for pressure vessel, as a real time test of AE.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.308-315
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• 2009

Because the attenuation of AE signal in composite materials is relatively higher than that of metallic materials, it is required to develop a damage assessment technique less affected by the attenuation property of composite materials in order to use AE sensing as a damage detection method. In the signal processing procedure, it is profitable to use the leading wave that arrives first because the leading wave is less influenced by the boundary conditions. Using wavelet transform, we investigated the frequency characteristics of impact induced AE signals focused on the leading wave in advance and chose the key factors to discriminate the damaged condition quantitatively. In this research, we established a damage assessment technique using the sharing percentage of the wavelet detail components of AE signal, and conducted a low-velocity impact test on composite laminates to confirm the feasibility of the proposed signal processing method.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.5-13
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• 2005

Acoustic emission(AE) is defined as the transient elastic waves thar are generated by the rapid release of energy. The advantage of AE is that very early crack growth can be detected well before a highly stressed component may fail. At present, an exact diagnosis is the most reliable means for determining the soundness of structures during power plant operations. AE monitoring has been applied successfully in power plants to determine mechanical problems, pressure vessel integrity and external valves leaks, vacuum leaks, the onset of cavitation in pumps and valves, the presence of flow(or no flow) in piping and heat exchange equipment, etc. Acoustic emission(AE) technology has recently strengthened its application base, and practitioners' understanding of the technique's fundamentals. This paper introduces the methods of a survey and assessment on AE monitoring applications in nuclear, fossil and hydraulic power plant. The main objective of this paper was to obtain information on various applications of AE technology in power plant.