Corrosion and fatigue crack monitoring by means of acoustic emission for application in transportation means

摘要

Corrosion damages and fatigue cracks are the main causes of structural failures in vessels and transport products. Acoustic emission is suggested as an alternative to the conventional inspection processes enabling continuous health monitoring of the structures. Comprehensive finite element analyses have been performed on the example of a 3-compartment road tanker taking the corresponding ADR design loads into account. The numerical results reveal various weld joints as the structure's failure-critical hot spots. Welded plates made of fine grain steel were stressed by corrosion and fatigue. Damage development in the material was measured and analyzed by acoustic emission testing. It is shown that the different degradation mechanisms, corrosion and fatigue crack growth in welded areas, can be reliably detected by acoustic emission. In addition, principal differences of the acoustic emission signals depending on the degradation mechanism are also explored.