Failure Prediction in Brittle Materials Using Fracture Mechanics and Acoustic Emission

Acoustic emission testing has found many uses in recent years and new applications are constantly being uncovered. The interesting areas for application lie in failure prediction and the characterization of the microscopic processes of yielding and fracture, and the macroscopic processes of slow crack growth and onset of fast crack propagation. This paper has described these applications and emphasized that the total counts and count rate depend on the energy released per event and the density of events per unit of deformation. Where models are presented, they should be regarded as first order approximations which await confirmation.