Patent ID: 8515676
Filing Date: 2013-08-20
Classification: G01H

Abstract:
1. A method for assessing the integrity of a rock mass, the method comprising: impacting the rock mass; capturing on a processor an acoustic signal of the impact as a digitized time domain signal, the acoustic signal captured by a microphone; on a processor, deriving a frequency distribution of the time domain signal by applying a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to the time domain signal data and allocating the transformed frequency domain signal values to at least three predefined discrete measurement frequency bands; processing data from the frequency distribution by a neural network process implemented on the processor, thereby applying artificial intelligence to assess the inputted data; presenting a signal from the neural network process which is indicative of the integrity of the rock mass on any one of audible and visible presentation means; and continuously capturing the digitized time domain signal in a circular buffer on the processor, and recognizing an event when the captured, digitized, time domain signal exceeds a predefined threshold value measured against a moving average of the captured, digitized, time domain signal values in the circular buffer.