DEFORMATION STAGE FOR QUANTITATIVE ACOUSTIC-EMISSION MEASUREMENTS

A deformation stage capable of fully reversed fatigue loading for use in the scanning electron microscope (SEM) is described. This stage inc orporates a novel surface displacement transducer for the detection of acoustic emission (AE) signals, which has a flat response over a wide band and can be used as a receiver up to 12 MHz. Also described is a method for analysis of these signals to obtain the size, speed, and lo cation of the source event. A special grip geometry is introduced such that the dynamic Greens function describing the surface displacement at the transducer contains an initial p-wave delta function which is u tilized to determine the source properties.