The existing acoustic emission (AE) source location methods assume that acoustic waves propagate along straight lines, and the source location is determined by average wave velocity. Because of the heterogeneity of materials, location results often fail to meet the accuracy requirement. For this reason, an AE source location method considering refraction in different media was proposed in this paper. According to sensor coordinates, the arrival time of acoustic waves, the velocities of acoustic waves in two kinds of media, the space-time relation equations of the AE source point and the measuring point were established by the precise coordinates of the AE source based on Snell’s law. The feasibility of the algorithm was verified by experiments, and the factors influencing location accuracy were also analysed. The results show that the algorithm proposed in this paper is applicable for both the same medium and different media, and the accuracy of localization is not affected by the ratio of wave velocities in two media or the distance from the AE source to the refraction surface.
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