• 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.