Structural health monitoring of liquid filled above ground storage tank floors: a time-reversed approach to acoustic emission source location

Abstract

Acoustic Emission (AE) is a proven successful Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) method to assess the state of storage tank floors. Traditional AE source location in tanks floors is performed using only the wavefronts that have traveled directly from the source to the sensor (direct hit). The wavefronts captured after reflected from the tank walls are identified and discarded. This paper proposes a new AE source location algorithm in tanks that considers a combination of reflections and direct hits. The proposed algorithm is based on time-reversed acoustics and ray theory. The methodology uses the concept of time-reversed acoustics in which a wave detected at any location can be directed back to the source when re-created at the detection place. Therefore, the developed approach takes the time at which each wave arrives to the sensor and sends it back as if time had reversed. Ray theory is used in the methodology to account for the way in which the wavefront is reflected when encounters an obstacle such as the walls of the tank. Then, the point of intersection of all wavefronts is identified using an optimization algorithm. This point where all wavefronts intersect is considered the location of the source. The location algorithm considers the first path or direct hits from the source to the sensors combined with reflections obtained by wavefronts bouncing from the tank walls. The proposed location algorithm was validated using numerical data from 176ft diameter tank and experimentally using AE data from a tank 55ft diameter.