Acoustic emission (AE) testing is potentially a highly suitable technique for structural health monitoring (SHM) applications due to its ability to achieve high sensitivity from a sparse array of sensors. For AE to be deployed as part of an SHM system it is essential that its capability is understood. This is the motivation for developing a forward model, referred to as QAE-Forward, of the complete AE process in real structures which is described in the first part of this paper. QAE-Forward is based around a modular and expandable architecture of frequency domain transfer functions to describe various aspects of the AE process, such as AE signal generation, wave propagation and signal detection. The intention is to build additional functionality into QAE-Forward as further data becomes available, whether this is through new analytic tools, numerical models or experimental measurements. QAE-Forward currently contains functions that implement (1) the excitation of multimodal guided waves by arbitrarily orientated point sources, (2) multi-modal wave propagation through generally anisotropic multi-layered media, and (3) the detection of waves by circular transducers of finite size. Results from the current implementation of QAE-Forward are compared to experimental data obtained from Hsu-Neilson tests on aluminum plate and good agreement is obtained. The paper then describes an experimental technique and a finite element modeling technique to obtain quantitative AE data from fatigue crack growth that will feed into QAE-Forward.
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