Identifying Elastic Wave Velocity Distribution with Observation Arrival Time Errors Using Weighted Potential Time in Acoustic Emission Tomography

Acoustic emission tomography (“AET”) is used to visualize internal structural damage. In this study, we aimed to improve the accuracy of the identified elastic wave velocity distribution when including errors in the observed arrival time, which is used as the observation value in AET. Weights were assigned to the potential excitation times used in location determination and elastic wave velocity distribution according to the magnitude of the potential excitation time and the wave line length. As a result, 100 instances of observation errors were generated for each observation error ratio via truncated normal distribution. The analysis results showed that the normalization error of the elastic wave velocity distribution increased in about 85%, 90%, and 95% of the cases for observation error ratios of 5%, 10%, and 15%, respectively. In conclusion, the weights used for the potential excitation time were effective in identifying elastic wave velocity distribution.