Analysis on accuracy improvement of rotor–stator rubbing localization based on acoustic emission beamforming method

• Effects of propagation characteristics on AE source localization are investigated.
• A signal pre-process method is introduced to reduce the effects of various factors.
• The algorithm of the revised localization velocity to reduce the effect of array size is developed.
• An improved acoustic emission beamforming method is proposed to localize rub fault.

This paper attempts to introduce an improved acoustic emission (AE) beamforming method to localize rotor–stator rubbing fault in rotating machinery. To investigate the propagation characteristics of acoustic emission signals in casing shell plate of rotating machinery, the plate wave theory is used in a thin plate. A simulation is conducted and its result shows the localization accuracy of beamforming depends on multi-mode, dispersion, velocity and array dimension. In order to reduce the effect of propagation characteristics on the source localization, an AE signal pre-process method is introduced by combining plate wave theory and wavelet packet transform. And the revised localization velocity to reduce effect of array size is presented. The accuracy of rubbing localization based on beamforming and the improved method of present paper are compared by the rubbing test carried on a test table of rotating machinery. The results indicate that the improved method can localize rub fault effectively.