Implementation of Nondestructive Crack Detection System for Automotive Press Panel

The first nondestructive crack detection system using acoustic emission (AE) parameter in the AE method for automotive press panels is presented. The cost damage caused by all inspections is worse, recently in the automotive industry. In this paper, a real-time crack detection system with the AE method that is especially produced for the automotive industry is demonstrated. The main purpose of this system is to correctly detect a crack during an ongoing process that operated seven times a minute. The system consisted of two parts: 1) the hardware and 2) digital signal processing part. The software part consisted of the AE parameter analyzer, which used the LabVIEW program. The AE was continuously monitored during the test using a sensor with a sampling rate of 300 kHz. A dome height test was employed for a laboratory measurement. The crack occurrence tendency was measured using a data acquisition system with a sampling rate of 300 kHz and a 20-dB preamplification. As a result, the maximum received frequency is 150 kHz with 120 W of power consumption according to the field test. The operating temperature ranges from -40°C to +85°C, considering the severe press factory environment for automotive with 1 s for analyzing the data. This research found a promising technique for improving a crack detection system based on experimental results, which showed that the duration of the AE parameters had a high probability of success.