LAUSR

HighlightsThe beamforming method is introduced to localize AE source of failure welded spot.AE beamforming approach can localize AE sources despite the fillet and crimping.The low frequency components in AE signal will affect the localization results.AE Beamforming method with WPT is validated to localize failure welded spot. &NA; A localization approach of welded joint damage is proposed based on acoustic emission (AE) beamforming. In this method, a uniform line array is introduced to detect the AE signal of welded joints in specified area. In order to investigate the influence of fillet and crimping commonly existing in a welded plate structure during the AE wave propagation process, the finite element method (FEM) is applied to simulate the behavior of AE wave in the specimen. The simulation localization results indicate that the proposed localization approach can effectively localize AE sources although there exist the fillet and crimping, and it is also validated by the pencil‐lead‐broken test on rectangular steel tube with welded joints. Finally, the proposed method is adopted to localize the failure of solder joint in operation vibration condition. The proposed method is successful to localize the compact AE source caused by the cracked joint based on wavelet packet transform.