L51462 Sensitivity Verification for Acoustic Emission on Buried Pipelines

The objective of this report was to develop a method of defining sensitivity of an installed acoustic emission system. The project was divided into five phases, which were designed to address specific tasks leading to development and evaluation of the sensitivity verification system. The five phases were: 1) Selection of a reference transducer with broadband characteristics. 2) Characterization of signals coming from defects when detected at various positions on a test pipe. 3) Development of a calibration system, which accurately simulates signals detected in the test pipe. 4) Field evaluation of equipment developed in Phase 3. 5) Documentation of the entire program.