Patent ID: 8208344

Claim:
A method for determining the location of an acoustic emission emitted in a physical structure, said method comprising the steps of: creating a computer model of said structure, said model identifying a set of predetermined sensor locations in said structure; selecting a set of data points on said model, each said data point being located at a known location; calculating, from said model, a set of time of flights (ToFs) for an acoustic emission from each of said data points to each of said set of predetermined sensor locations, said sets of ToFs calculated from a set of one or more candidate shortest paths in said model between each of said data points via a set of other of said data points to each of said sensor locations, the ToF for each path taking into account one or more acoustic emission propagation characteristics of said path; providing a set of sensors in said structure at said set of predetermined sensor locations, each said sensor being arranged to detect acoustic emissions from said structure; receiving an acoustic emission at said sensors and determining the set of ToFs of said acoustic emission to each said sensor; identifying a closest match between said sets of ToFs calculated from said model and said set of ToFs for said received acoustic emission and determining the set of closest data points to the origin of said acoustic emission; and mathematically interpolating the location of said origin of said acoustic emission from said known data point locations, said sets of ToFs for each of said set of closest data points and said set of ToFs for said received acoustic emission.