Acoustic Emission
Acoustic Emission technology is an advanced NDT technology with unique advantages:
- In-service evaluation of plant asset integrity
- Non-invasive inspection
- Single instance quick inspection of large surface area
- Detects early onset of growing defects as well as their severity
- Material independent (metals, composites, ceramic, concrete etc.)
Example of defects detected:
Corrosion, pitting, cracks, leaks, delamination, matrix cracking/fibre break/debonding, mechanical wear/friction/misalignment, partial electrical discharge etc.
How It Works?
Acoustic emission (AE) testing is a non-destructive testing (NDT) technique that detects and monitors the release of ultrasonic stress waves from localised sources when a material deforms under stress.
Applications
- Above ground storage tanks (AST) bottom plate/shell (incl. spherical tanks)
- Underground storage tanks (UST)
- Above ground and buried pipelines
- Pressure vessels, columns, reactors (incl. high/low temperature eqpt.)
- Composite material tanks, vessels, piping, cylinders
- Civil/mechanical structural health monitoring (SHM)
- Rotating machines (bearing, gears, axial misalignment)
- Utility transformers
- Process monitoring
