Development of an Empirical Model for Damage Degree Assessment in Steel Specimens Based on the Results of Statistical Processing of Acoustic Emission Signal Flow

The study is devoted to applying the acoustic emission (AE) method to monitoring the state of structural materials at the inelastic and ultimate deformation stages. The possibilities of using the standard AE signal parameters recorded at the inelastic and ultimate deformation stages to assess the damage degree of steel specimens are investigated. It is shown that such parameters as the maximum amplitude of recorded AE signals and their AE activity do not have clear correlation with the degree of damage to products made of structural steel and alloys. This makes it difficult to apply standard methods for assessing the damage degree of structural steels. The feasibility of monitoring the state of damage to 30KhGSA alloy steel at the inelastic and ultimate stages by the evaluation of partial activity of high-energy AE signals weight content was presented. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov criterion is used to separate the processes of ductile and brittle fracture.