Design and development of a high-speed data acquisition system for acquiring acoustic emission signals

One of the most promising non-destructive testing method suitable for in-situ detection of damages in structures and materials is Acoustic emission (AE) testing. AE waveforms can be related to various source mechanisms using suitable signal processing techniques and are characterized by low amplitude, high frequency and short duration. Data acquisition system to capture and analyze such high frequency range AE signals are expensive. One of the key components in such commercial systems are the signal conditioning units. Thus, in the present work, a signal conditioning unit (SCU) is designed and developed to process the AE signals. Further, a low-cost AE signal data acquisition system was developed by using the fabricated signal condition unit. Signals from the data acquisition system was saved using Python libraries for further analysis. The developed system was tested at lab-scale by acquiring the signals generated during pencil lead break tests on a stainless steel and composite plates. The performance of the in-house developed AE data acquisition system has been compared with the commercially available one and the comparison results are presented in this paper.