Ensuring the Operational Reliability of Elastic Elements by Acoustic Methods

Machine plants place a great deal of emphasis on evaluating the quality of the materials they use and predicting the service characteristics of their finished products. The quality of these materials is usually checked by time-consuming visual inspection of selected batches, and the results that are obtained are not always reliable. It is also important to be able to predict the quality of finished products over time (determine the products’ properties during their use). The properties of products used in machine construction are normally predicted by using destructive methods based on the results obtained from evaluating a chosen batch of products, which is energy-consuming and entails high labor costs. A method based on the recording of acoustic emission signals is proposed here for checking incoming materials. The method makes it possible to expeditiously assess the conformance of the materials to the requirements on the manufacturer’s certificate and determine if they are free of unacceptable defects.