Article

Journal of Vibration and Control

1–12

Evaluation of acoustic emission ! The Author(s) 2018

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burst detection methods in a gearbox DOI: 10.1177/1077546318802988
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under different operating conditions

F. Leaman , C. Niedringhaus, S. Hinderer and K. Nienhaus

Abstract
In account of its abilities to follow the damage progression, also at early stages, the acoustic emission (AE) analysis has
become an attractive technique for machine condition monitoring. An AE analysis involves the detection of transients
within the signals, which are called AE bursts. Traditional methods for AE burst detection are based on the definition of
threshold values. When the machine under analysis works under variable operating conditions, threshold-based methods
could lead to poor results due to the influence of these conditions on the AE generation. The present work compares
the ability of three AE burst detection methods in a planetary gearbox working under different rotational speeds and
loads. The results showed that performance could be significantly improved by using factors of the root mean square
value as threshold values instead of fixed values. Among the evaluated methods, the method that includes demodulation
and differentiation as a signal processing technique had the best performance overall.

Keywords
Acoustic emission, planetary gearbox, variable load and rotational speed, hit detection

transformations in metals. The attention paid to the AE

1. Introduction
Planetary gearboxes are standard transmission compo-
nents in heavy machinery such as wind turbines, dump
trucks or electric rope shovels. For similar construction
sizes, they offer higher speed-change ratios and better
load distribution than fixed-shaft gearboxes. Condition
monitoring systems for gearboxes are generally based
on vibration analysis, which is a well-known technique
for machine fault diagnosis (Lei et al., 2014; Sharma
and Parey, 2016). On account of the variable operating
conditions in which the aforementioned machinery
works and the complex dynamics of planetary gear-
boxes, the tools from vibration analysis have to be care-
fully applied (Vicuña, 2014; Yoon et al., 2014).
Another condition monitoring technique for gear-
boxes that has become an active field of research in
recent years is the acoustic emission (AE) analysis.
The AE is defined as elastic stress waves generated by
rapid release of strain energy due to changes in the
material internal structure (Miller and McIntire, 1987).
The AE phenomena take place in a high-frequency
range, with typical frequencies from 20 kHz–1 MHz
(ISO 22096:2007, 2007). Some sources of AE are initi-
ation and growth of cracks, slip, dislocations, and phase
analysis over other traditional techniques, such as vibra-
tion analysis, is because of its ability to detect damage in
earlier stages (Tan et al., 2007; Loutas et al., 2009;
Elasha et al., 2017). Besides, there is evidence for the
relationship between AE generation and fatigue behav-
ior of materials. This has been shown for example in the
correlation between the number of AE bursts and crack
propagation (Barile et al., 2015; Boos, 2015; Mazal et al.,
2015). These attributes make the AE analysis attractive
not only for fault diagnosis of gearboxes, but also for
fault prognosis.
According to the standard ISO 12716:2001 (2001),
the term AE burst refers to an individual emission event
occurring within the material and is recommended only
for describing the qualitative appearance of emission
Institute for Advanced Mining Technologies, RWTH Aachen University,
Germany
Received: 20 February 2018; accepted: 3 September 2018
Corresponding author:
Felix Leaman, Institute for Advanced Mining Technologies, RWTH
Aachen University, Wüllnerstrasse 2, D-52062 Aachen, Germany.
Email: fleaman@amt.rwth-aachen.de
2 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)
signals. The standard DIN EN 1330-9:2009 (2009)
defines a burst as an AE signal having an identifiable
beginning and end. The same standard defines a con-
tinuous signal as an AE signal having no identifiable
beginning and end, and noise as signals without rele-
vance for the analysis. In order to make an optimal
utilization of the AE analysis, the bursts have to be
properly detected in the acquired signals. There are dif-
ferent methods to detect AE bursts within time signals.
Most of them are based on the definition of a threshold
value, that is, when a characteristic of the signal over-
passes a pre-defined value, the event is classified as a
burst. This type of approach has been widely used for
AE burst detection (Stern, 1972; Choudhury and
Tandon, 2000; Thayoob et al., 2010; Nienhaus et al.,
2012; Keshtgar and Modarres, 2013; Vicuña and
Höweler, 2013; Lopes et al., 2017; ).
One important aspect of the AE generation in gear-
boxes is its dependency on the operating conditions.
It has been indicated that the rotational speed, load,
and temperature have influence on the AE root mean
square (RMS) values and amplitude of AE bursts
(Tan and Mba, 2005a, 2005b; Vicuña, 2014; Novoa
and Vicuña, 2016). For this reason, the use of thresh-
old-based AE burst detection methods could produce
unsatisfactory results when machines with variable
speed or load are under analysis. In an ideal case,
when there is large amount of AE data recorded
under different operating conditions, the threshold
values could be set for every one of them. Apart from
this being a tedious and time-consuming work, this
ideal case is not common. Since the AE analysis is a
relatively new technique, in industrial applications it is
common not to have historical recorded AE data.
Thus, this work explores the generalization ability of
three methods to detect AE bursts in a planetary gearbox
under different operating conditions. For that, the thresh-
old values of each method were set for one operating
Figure 1. Burst detection with the threshold-based method.
condition, and then used for bursts detection under
other operating conditions. The evaluation also includes
the comparison between fixed thresholds and variable
thresholds based on the RMS value of the signal.
2. Description of methods
The methods for AE burst detection can be modeled as
a two-step process. The objectives of the first step are to
reduce the noise level and to enhance the bursts. In this
case the noise comes from nonmaterial related sources,
such as electric noise from the measurement chain.
The noise reduction can be achieved by using signal
processing techniques. In this paper, techniques such
as filtering, demodulation and statistical analysis are
used. The objective of the second step is to determine
whether an event within the signal can be classified as a
burst or not. Most of the methods in the literature
follow this two-step process, although the first step is
optional, and the detection could be carried out directly
in the second step.
2.1. Amplitude threshold level (THR)
The most traditional and intuitive method to detect AE
bursts in one step (i.e., without a noise reduction step)
consists of the definition of an amplitude threshold level
Ta (Hellier, 2003). When the amplitude of a data point
is higher than Ta, this point is considered a potential
burst. Since the same burst can have several points
above Ta, a burst definition time
tdef must be defined
in order to avoid considering points of the same burst
as different bursts. Once the first point of a burst above
the threshold is detected, the first point of the next burst
can be located only after
tdef as it is shown in
Figure 1. Normally the parameters Ta and
tdef are
empirically or statistically determined after visualiza-
tion or analysis of the signals.
Leaman et al.
In order to establish the amplitude threshold level Ta,
different approaches can be considered. For instance, a
fixed value (FIX-V) capable of detecting most of the
bursts and minimizing false detections can be set.
Usually this value is set above the continuous amplitude
noise level of the signals. While establishing a threshold
close to the noise level would raise the number of
detected bursts, even the ones with lower amplitudes, it
could lead also to undesirable wrong detections. On
the other hand, when a higher threshold is established
the number of wrong detections would decrease at the
expense of a lower number of detected bursts. Another
approach is to consider an amplitude threshold level rela-
tive to a characteristic value of the signal. For instance, a
fixed factor of the signal RMS value xrms could be used.
In the case of gearboxes, it is important that the length of
the signal used to calculate the RMS value includes at
least one entire rotation of the slow shaft. When this
condition is not satisfied, that is, a too short length of
the signal is used for the calculation, the contribution
from an angular portion of one gear would not be
included. When this portion is the one containing for
example a fault, the RMS value could be underestimated
since faults produce higher RMS levels.
2.2. Window power variation (WIN)
As a first step, this method divides the signal into sev-
eral windows of the same length and in every window
the RMS value is calculated. Since windows containing
a burst have a higher RMS value than windows without
a burst, this step seeks to enhance the bursts. No other
noise reduction technique is necessarily required. As a
second step, the RMS value in each window is com-
pared to the RMS value in the previous window. If
the difference is higher than a determined threshold
T
rms, the current window is classified as a burst
(Boos, 2015). The window length should be set up as

tdef and together with the threshold T
rms, both par-
ameters are determined empirically or statistically after
examination of the signals. As an empirical procedure,
the authors recommend calculating the RMS value in a
window containing the burst with the maximal ampli-
tude and in a window without a burst. The difference of
both can be considered as an upper limit for T
rms,
while the lower limit is zero. An optimal value can be
obtained by iteratively testing different values within
the range and analyzing the results. An explanation
of the method is shown in Figure 2.
2.3. Edge detection (EDG) method
The first step of this method is to obtain the differential
signal from the amplitude envelope, followed by a
second step of burst detection through the definition
3
of an amplitude threshold level Tade (the same as in
the THR method, but applied to the differential enve-
lope instead) (Boos, 2015). There are several demodu-
lation techniques to obtain the amplitude envelope of a
signal, but in this study, we will focus on the rectifica-
tion method. First, a high-pass filter or band-pass filter
is used to isolate the frequency range with higher energy
of AE. Then, the signal is rectified, the medium value
subtracted, and a low-pass filter is applied to obtain the
envelope. The resulting signal is an amplitude envelope
which reveals amplitude variations above the signal’s
continuous level. Since the focus is to detect changes
in amplitude above the continuous level, the differential
signal of the envelope is used instead of the envelope
itself. For discrete signals, the differential signal is
obtained by subtracting a delayed version of the
signal from the signal itself. The entire signal processing
technique is explained in Figure 3.
In order to properly carry out the demodulation pro-
cess, the filter frequencies have to be correctly selected.
In the case of burst detection, the high-pass filter or
band-pass filter should preserve the frequency band in
which the bursts are being generated, while the low-
pass filter should preserve the frequencies at which
the bursts take place (Vicuña, 2009).
3. Procedure
The AE signals were measured in a planetary gearbox
test rig. The ring gear outside diameter was 144 mm.
The speed reduction ratio was 1:5. The input shaft
was connected to a 22 kW electric motor and the
output shaft to a generator. Both machines were con-
nected to variable-frequency drives in order to control
the rotational speed (motor) and load levels (gener-
ator). An AE sensor was fixed on the gearbox case. A
fault in one tooth of the ring gear was produced in
order to have visible bursts in the acquired signals.
The fault corresponded to a notch with length 15 mm
and width 0.5 mm. The height of the tooth was 3 mm
and the width 15 mm, so that the notch covered the
entire width of the tooth. The test rig and fault are
both shown in Figure 4. The measurements were car-
ried out under two levels of input rotational speeds
(1000 and 1500 revolutions per minute (RPM)) and
two levels of load (40% and 80% of the motor nominal
torque). For all measurements a sampling frequency of
1 MHz for the AE acquisition system was used.
The measurements were carried out under four dif-
ferent operating conditions. The condition with max-
imal rotational speed and load was selected as the
reference condition, and it was used to determine
values of parameters such as thresholds or filter fre-
quencies. Then, the same parameters were used to
detect bursts with the three methods for the other
4 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)
Figure 2. Bursts detection with the window power variation method.
operating conditions. In this way, the sensitivity of the
methods to their parameters could be evaluated when
the gearbox runs at a lower rotational speed or load.
From the reference condition, two signals were used for
the analysis, one for parameters setting (training) and
the other for test. For the other operating conditions,
only the test signals were considered. Then, each signal
was divided into windows and manually classified as
‘‘burst’’ or ‘‘continuous noise.’’ The length of the win-
dows corresponds to the parameter
tdef defined in
Sub-section 2.1, which was selected empirically accord-
ing to the maximal duration of the bursts. The classifi-
cation process consisted of visual examination
according to the definition presented in the introduc-
tion. It was considered that a burst is an amplitude-rise
event with a clear beginning and end.
The methods were evaluated based on binary classi-
fication performance scores. Due to the asymmetry
in the number of windows with and without a burst,
the performance scores used for the evaluation were
recall, false positive rate (FPR), and the Matthews cor-
relation coefficient (MCC). The three performance
scores are defined in equations (1)–(3). In these equa-
tions, TP corresponds to ‘‘True Positive,’’ in this case a
burst correctly detected by the method, while FN cor-
responds to ‘‘False Negative,’’ a burst not detected by
the method. FP corresponds to ‘‘False Positive,’’ an
event detected as a burst by the method, which was
not a real burst. Finally, TN corresponds to ‘‘True
Negative,’’ a window without a burst, in which the
method did not detect a burst. The parameters’ selec-
tion was done according to a maximum MCC criterion.
TP
Recall ¼ ð1Þ
TP þ FN
FP
FPR ¼ ð2Þ
ðFP þ TNÞ
Leaman et al. 5

Figure 3. Bursts detection with the edge detection method.

Figure 4. Test rig and fault in one tooth from ring gear.

can be used even when the classes have very different

TP  TN  FP  FN sizes (Boughorbei et al., 2017). Its values are between -1
MCC ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð3Þ
ðTP þ FPÞðTP þ FNÞðTN þ FPÞðTN þ FNÞ (total disagreement) and 1 (perfect prediction).

The recall score indicates the rate of correctly

4. Results
detected bursts and the FPR indicates the rate of
wrong detections. Both scores have values between 0 Table 1 summarizes the signals, operating conditions,
and 1. The MCC score is a balanced measure, which number of bursts according to the classification, and
6 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)

Table 1. Operating conditions, number of bursts and root mean square (RMS) value of the signals.

Rotation speed Number RMS

Signal (revolutions per minute Load of bursts value (mV)

Training 1500 80% 325 22.36

Test 1 1500 80% 321 22.89
Test 2 1000 80% 222 9.95
Test 3 1500 40% 261 17.04
Test 4 1000 40% 215 8.26

mean value was doubled, and the MCC mean value

Table 2. Thresholds-based method tuning using the training was also increased (although the FPR mean value
signal. also did increase). The standard deviations of the
recall and MCC were also considerably decreased.
False Matthews The detection of bursts in segments of the test signals
positive correlation using the RMS-F approach is shown in Figure 5. In
Ta (mV) Recall rate coefficient
Figure 5, the windows containing a burst are high-
60 0.828 0.264 0.525 lighted and the star-markers indicate a burst detected
80 0.785 0.083 0.708 by the method. As it can be seen, there are some FP in
100 0.625 0.019 0.691 these segments, which are due mainly to high points, as
120 0.418 0.003 0.569
for example at 0.112 seconds in Figure 5 (upper right).

4.2. Results of WIN method

RMS value of the reference and test raw signals.
An inspection of the signals revealed that most bursts
have duration less than 0.001 seconds. Accordingly, we
selected this time as
tdef. Since each signal had 220
data points, the number of windows for every one of
them was 1048.
4.1. Results THR method
According to the training signal, an amplitude thresh-
old Ta of 100 mV was first estimated, since the noise
reached amplitudes slightly lower than this value.
Then, this selection was improved testing different
values. Table 2 shows the results of the tuning using
the training signal. The results showed that a value of
Ta ¼ 80 mV maximizes the MCC score. This value cor-
responds to a factor 3.577 of the signal RMS value.
Using the selected threshold, the method was applied
to the test signals considering the FIX-V and the RMS-
factor (RMS-F) approaches. The results are shown
respectively in Table 3. For the FIX-V approach the
recall and MCC scores had high variability depending
on the operating conditions, especially for different
rotational speeds. For the test signal taken under the
same operating conditions as the training signal
(1500 RPM and 80% load) nearly 80% of the bursts
were detected, while for the signal taken under
1000 RPM and 40% load almost no bursts were
detected. Considering the RMS-F approach instead,
the results were considerably improved. The recall
Table 4 shows the tuning of the WIN method using the
training signal. The highest MCC score was obtained
using T
rms ¼ 6.0 mV, which is equivalent to a factor
0.268 of the signal RMS value. Using this value, the
method was applied to the test signals using the FIX-V
and RMS-F approaches. The results are shown in
Table 5. Once again, the results indicate that the
RMS-F approach produces better results and with
less variability than the FIX-V approach. For the
RMS-F approach it is observed that the scores for
the three first operating conditions are relatively con-
stant. For these conditions near 42% of the bursts are
correctly detected. Only for the last condition
(1000 RPM and 80% load), did the scores decrease.
The detection of bursts in the segments from the
test signals using the RMS-F approach is shown in
Figure 6. As was expected, every time a burst appears
in the signals the RMS value of the window is higher
than in the previous window. Although there are no FP
due to high-points in the segments shown, there are
some FN corresponding to low amplitude bursts.
4.3. Results of EDG method
The Fourier spectrum of the signal revealed that the
energy of AE is concentrated mainly from 80–
200 kHz, since beyond that amplitudes are considerably
slower. Therefore, the pre-filter (band-pass or high-
pass) for the demodulation should include this fre-
quency band. Two filters were then tested. First a
Leaman et al. 7

Table 3. Results of thresholds-based method for the test signals.

Recall False positive rate Matthews correlation coefficient

Root mean
Fixed value square-factor
Signal (FIX-V) (RMS-F) FIX-V RMS-F FIX-V RMS-F

Test 1 0.807 0.769 0.084 0.055 0.724 0.739

Test 2 0.095 0.833 0 0.161 0.276 0.598
Test 3 0.575 0.805 0.015 0.122 0.669 0.649
Test 4 0.002 0.609 0.001 0.258 0.102 0.302
Mean value 0.374 0.754 0.029 0.149 0.443 0.572
Standard deviation 0.323 0.087 0.035 0.074 0.262 0.164

Figure 5. Detection of acoustic emission bursts in segments of the test signals with the threshold-based method using
Ta ¼ 3.577 xrms.

high-pass filter with cut-off frequency of 80 kHz, and tuning process using the training signal. The results are
then a band-pass filter with cut-off frequencies 80 and shown in Table 6.
200 kHz. The low-pass filter cut-off frequencies, According to the tuning results, the highest MCC
together with the threshold value Tade were set in the score was obtained using a high-pass filter with a
8 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)

cut-off frequency of 80 kHz, a low-pass filter with cut- slightly lower. Both methods had almost the same
off frequency of 2 kHz, and an amplitude threshold standard deviation. The WIN method had the lowest
value for the differential envelope of Tade ¼ 0.02 mV. FPR, but also the lowest recall score.
This value is equivalent to a factor 1.209 of the RMS In order to test the sensitivity of the methods to
value from the differential envelope. Using these par- changes in the threshold values, the detection of AE
ameters, the method was applied to the test signals, bursts was carried out again using the selected thresh-
considering the FIX-V and RMS-F approaches. The olds multiplied by factors of 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2.
results are shown in Table 7. Once again it was con- Figure 8 shows the results of this sensitivity analysis.
firmed that the RMS-F approach produces recall and Figure 8 indicates that a change of 20% in the
MCC scores with higher mean values and less variabil- selected threshold value produces changes in the
ity than the FIX-V approach. MCC mean score of approximately 40% for the THR
The detection of bursts in segments of the test signals method, 1% for the WIN method, and 20% for the
using the RMS-F approach is shown in Figure 7. EDG method. The standard deviations remain rela-
It is observed that most bursts were correctly detected. tively stable with changes lower than 10%.
Bursts with lower beginning slope, for instance at 0.104 Even though the optimal thresholds were selected to
seconds in Figure 7 (upper left) could not be detected. maximize the MCC scores using the training signal, it
should be noted that in this analysis with the test signals
higher scores were obtained using higher thresholds for
4.4. Comparison of methods the THR and EDG methods.
A comparison of the performance of the methods can
be achieved by observing Tables 3, 5, and 7.
5. Discussion
Accounting for the RMS-F approach, it is observed
that the EDG method achieved the highest MCC The threshold-based methods evaluated in this study all
score, while the THR method achieved an MCC score have the disadvantage that a fixed threshold could be
well estimated for one operating condition, but it will
not necessarily perform well for use under other oper-
Table 4. Window power variation method tuning using the ating conditions. For example, the THR and EDG
training signal. methods could detect nearly 80% of the bursts for the
test signal taken under the same operating conditions as
Matthews the training signal. The WIN method could detect
False positive correlation
nearly 40% instead. However, for the signal taken
Ta (mV) Recall rate coefficient
under different rotational speed and load this detection
4.5 0.468 0.051 0.501 level decreased near to 0% for the three methods.
5.0 0.465 0.041 0.518 Some studies have concluded that the AE RMS
5.5 0.455 0.035 0.524 value increases along with the rotational speed and
6.0 0.443 0.029 0.526 load in gearboxes (Vicuña, 2014; Novoa and Vicuña,
6.5 0.428 0.025 0.522 2016), while others indicated that the AE RMS value
increases mainly due to the rotational speed (Tan and
7.0 0.409 0.021 0.516
Mba, 2005a). Thus, for the AE bursts detection under

Table 5. Results of window power variation method for the test signals.

Recall False positive rate Matthews correlation coefficient

Root mean
Fixed square-factor
Signal value (FIX-V) (RMS-F) FIX-V RMS-F FIX-V RMS-F

Test 1 0.433 0.424 0.033 0.030 0.508 0.506

Test 2 0.135 0.437 0 0.013 0.331 0.569
Test 3 0.360 0.418 0.009 0.034 0.514 0.493
Test 4 0.014 0.214 0.001 0.026 0.084 0.307
Mean value 0.236 0.373 0.011 0.026 0.360 0.469
Standard deviation 0.169 0.092 0.013 0.008 0.176 0.098
Leaman et al. 9

Figure 6. Detection of acoustic emission bursts in segments of the test signals with the window power variation method using
Trms ¼ 0.268 xrms.

Table 6. Edge detection method tuning using the training signal.

False positive Matthews correlation
Pre-filter Post-filter Ta (mV) Recall rate coefficient

HP 80 (kHz]) LP 2 (kHz) 0.01 0.843 0.246 0.557

0.02 0.825 0.091 0.728
0.03 0.649 0.025 0.699
LP 5 (kHz) 0.06 0.775 0.091 0.688
0.07 0.732 0.053 0.713
0.08 0.677 0.035 0.702
LP 8 (kHz) 0.16 0.702 0.073 0.656
0.14 0.677 0.054 0.668
0.15 0.631 0.044 0.648
BP 80–200 (kHz) LP 2 (kHz) 0.01 0.837 0.344 0.456
0.02 0.846 0.108 0.722
0.03 0.717 0.044 0.716
LP 5 (kHz) 0.07 0.769 0.102 0.667
0.08 0.726 0.059 0.698
0.09 0.671 0.036 0.694
LP 8 (kHz) 0.15 0.714 0.082 0.653
0.16 0.686 0.065 0.657
0.17 0.646 0.053 0.646
10 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)

Table 7. Results of edge detection method for the test signals.

Recall False positive rate Matthews correlation coefficient

Root mean
Fixed square-factor
Signal value (FIX-V) (RMS-F) FIX-V RMS-F FIX-V RMS-F

Test 1 0.834 0.798 0.065 0.052 0.774 0.765

Test 2 0.351 0.851 0.002 0.098 0.537 0.704
Test 3 0.785 0.854 0.037 0.135 0.777 0.671
Test 4 0.056 0.665 0.005 0.265 0.168 0.339
Mean value 0.507 0.792 0.027 0.138 0.564 0.620
Standard deviation 0.321 0.077 0.026 0.079 0.249 0.165

Figure 7. Detection of acoustic emission bursts in segments of the test signals with the edge detection method using Tade ¼ 1.209 xrms.

variable operating conditions, it is reasonable to pro-
pose the use of threshold values as factors of the RMS
value instead of fixed values. The results of this study
confirm this, showing that the detection rates are highly
improved.
Among the evaluated methods, the WIN method had
the lowest MCC mean score, with a recall mean score of
only 37.3%. On the other hand, this method had also the
lowest FPR mean score. This means that this method is
adequate, especially for detecting bursts of high energy.
Leaman et al.
Figure 8. Sensitivity of the methods to the threshold value: Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) mean value (left); and MCC
standard deviation (right).
The EDG method had the highest MCC mean score
overall. Although the THR method had only a slightly
lower MCC mean score than the EDG method, the
results also showed that the THR method has a
higher sensitivity to the threshold selection. This
means that the demodulation and differentiation as a
signal processing technique is adequate to enhance the
AE bursts, and should be used when the analysis is
carried out under variable operating conditions.
6. Conclusions
In this study, three of the threshold-based AE burst detec-
tion methods were evaluated. They were applied to sig-
nals acquired in a planetary gearbox working under
different operating conditions. The obtained results
allow us to conclude that:
. The performance of the threshold-based AE bursts
detection methods can be highly improved by the use
of thresholds as factors of the RMS value instead of
fixed values.
. According to the evaluation methodology, the EDG
method had the best performance overall. Not only
did it have the highest detection score, but also lower
sensitivity to changes in the threshold value.
. This means that the first step of signal processing
(demodulation and differentiation) of the EDG
method is adequate to enhance the bursts over the con-
tinuous noise, and it should be used when the analysis
is carried out under variable operating conditions.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
11
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
F. Leaman http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1009-5368
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