Patent ID: 7698943

Claim:
A method for evaluating pressure containers made of composite materials by means of acoustic emission testing, comprising the steps: (a) determining a sufficient number of internal pressure-dependent acoustic emission characteristics (AE characteristics) of pressure containers from identical production that have been classified as being without defects in predetermined phases of a time-controlled pressure acting upon the pressure container (AE test procedure) with one or more acoustic emission channels (AE channels) using acoustic emission sensors (AE sensors) of a predetermined position (one AE characteristic per AE sensor or AE channel); (b) defining feature criteria on the basis of the AE characteristics compiled from step (a) and quantification of all AE characteristics from step (a); (c) statistical analysis of the quantified feature criteria of all AE characteristics from step (b), separated according to feature criteria; (d) quantitative determination of evaluation criteria or rejection criteria—depending on the goal—for each quality criterion or each desired combination of quality criteria by defining limit values for the feature criteria from step (c); (e) quantitative determination of the measured values for each feature criterion of each AE channel by analogy with steps (a) and (b) for each of the pressure containers to be evaluated; and (f) comparison of the measured values front step (e) with the evaluation criteria and/or rejection criteria from step (d).