Plasticity and damage characteristic of acoustic emission signals for S460 steel exposed to tensile load

Abstract

S460 steel is increasingly used in civil engineering, especially in a harsh environment such as offshore structures [1]. Material damage is inevitable for structures subjected to static and dynamic loads during their technical life time. Thus, monitoring material damage is important for providing information regarding critical damage of in-service structures. Non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques have been widely used for damage detection in recent years. Acoustic emission (AE), one of the efficient NDT techniques, can identify material damage based on the rapid release of strain energy as bursts of transient elastic waves. Previous research showed that the AE technique is sensitive and reliable in the detection of the material damage [2,3]. Specifically, AE signals contain information on a number of damage factors, such as material types, plasticity level, loading conditions and microdefects [4].