Effects of sonic speed on location accuracy of acoustic emission source in rocks

To quantitatively study the location errors induced by deviation of sonic speed, the line and plane location tests were carried out. A broken pencil was simulated as acoustic emission source in the rocks. The line and plane location tests were carried out in the granite rod using two sensors and the cube of marble using four sensors, respectively. To compare the position accuracy between line and plane positions, the line poison test was also carried out on the marble surface. The results show that for line positioning, the maximum error of absolute distance is about 0.8 cm. With the speed difference of 200 m/s, the average value of absolute difference from the position error is about 0.4 cm. For the plane positioning, in the case of the sensor array of 30 cm, the absolute positioning distance is up to 8.7 cm. It can be seen that the sonic speed seriously impacts on the plane positioning accuracy. The plane positioning error is lager than the line positioning error, which means that when the line position can satisfy the need in practical engineering, it is better to use the line position instead of the plane location. The plane positioning error with the diagonal speed is the minimum one.