LAUSR

HighlightsThe weak AE source is easy to be lost when only the beamforming method is used to localize simultaneous double AE sources.A SVD‐beamforming method is proposed to localize double AE sources with significant different energy.A criterion is proposed to determine the number of localized AE sources.The feasibility of the present method is validated through numerical simulation and experimental results. ABSTRACT Aiming at the issue that the weak AE source is easy to be lost when localizing simultaneous two acoustic emission (AE) sources by the beamforming method (BFM), a novel method is developed based on beamforming and singular value decomposition (SVD). Firstly, the AE data and propagation characteristics of the two simultaneous AE sources with different frequency, different magnitude and different positions are obtained, and localization results by directly using the beamforming are investigated. Then SVD method is introduced to pre‐process the signals from AE sources and solve the problem of missing location. Finally, the method is verified on a steel plate by AE experiment. The results show that the localization method based on SVD‐beamforming method (SVD‐BFM) can effectively locate the simultaneous double AE sources.