Lamb wave-based corrosion source location on a plate of magnesium alloy WZ73 using the acoustic emission technique

Corrosion on a plate of magnesium alloy WZ73 in contact with 0.01 mol/L NaCl solution was analysed by long-range testing using the acoustic emission (AE) technique. At a distance d = 1.66 m to the source, the Lamb wave propagation of resulting AE events was examined and used for corrosion source location. As a first step, pencil lead break test was carried out and corresponding Lamb wave analysis served as reference to the varying corrosion signals of lower intensity. Additionally, the plate was excited by a piezo transducer for imitating a selected corrosion event. For analysis of the propagating wave field, the plate surface was measured by a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV), allowing a high-resolution corrosion signal reconstruction and path tracking of direct and reflected Lamb wave packets. Based on the SLDV results, a deeper understanding of the complex wave field propagation during the sensor-based corrosion analysis was achieved.