Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Ain Shams Engineering Journal

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Mechanical Engineering

Corrosion detection and severity level prediction using acoustic emission

and machine learning based approach
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh a, Khurram Kamal b,⇑, Faheem Rafique b, Salman Sabir b, Hassan Zaheer b,
Kashif Khan c
a
University of Management and Technology Lahore, Sialkot Campus, Pakistan
b
National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
c
DHA Suffa University, Karachi, Pakistan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Failure caused by corrosion in industries are the major cause of breakdown maintenance. Acoustic emis-
Received 30 October 2019 sion during the accelerated corrosion testing is a reliable method for corrosion detection, however, clas-
Revised 13 September 2020 sification of these acoustic emission signals by machine learning techniques is still in its infancy.
Accepted 14 March 2021
Proposed approach uses a hybrid technique that combines the detection of corrosion through acoustic
Available online xxxx
emission signals from accelerated corrosion testing with machine learning techniques to accurately pre-
dict the corrosion severity levels. Laboratory based experimentation setup was established for acceler-
Keywords:
ated corrosion testing of mild steel samples for different time spans and mass loss of samples were
Acoustic emission
Corrosion detection
recorded. Acoustic emission signals were acquired at high frequency sampling rate with Sound Well
Accelerated corrosion testing AE sensor, NI Elvis kit and NI Labview software. AE mean, AE RMS, AE energy, and kurtosis were selected
Machine learning classifiers as distinct features as they represent a linear relationship with the corrosion process. For multi-class
Severity level prediction problem, five Corrosion severity levels have been made based on mass loss occurred during accelerated
corrosion testing for which Naive Bayes, BP-NN and RBF-NN showed accuracy of 90.4%, 94.57%, and 100%
respectively.
Ó 2021 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier BV on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams Uni-
versity. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
Corrosion is the metal’s chemical disintegration into its compo-
nents and degrades the metals into its oxides and sulphides by
reacting chemically or electrochemically. Natural corrosion is a
slow process; however, environmental conditions such as pH, tem-
perature, stress and humidity can accelerate the process [1]. Uni-
form corrosion is the form of corrosion when metal loss occurs
evenly over the whole exposed surface area. Localized corrosion
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: muhammad.fahad@skt.umt.edu.pk (M.F. Sheikh), khurram.
kamal@pnec.nust.edu.pk (K. Kamal), faheem34@mts.ceme.edu.pk (F. Rafique),
salman35@mts.ceme.edu.pk (S. Sabir), hassan35@mts.ceme.edu.pk (H. Zaheer),
kashif.khan@dsu.edu.pk (K. Khan).
Peer review under responsibility of Ain Shams University.
Production and hosting by Elsevier
occurs by the local breakdown of the passive layer that protects
the material from the environment. This breakdown leads to very
high rates of metal dissolution at these sites, while the majority
of the metal surface remains in the passive state [2]. Pitting and
crevice corrosion are the examples of localized corrosion.
According to National Association of Corrosion Engineers
(NACE), corrosion, annually costs around 2:5 trillion US dollars
globally which is equivalent to 3:4% of the global Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) 2013 [3]. Direct costs include the costs of materials,
repair, maintenance and the replacement cost of equipment dam-
aged due to corrosion. Production loss, environmental impacts,
transportation disruptions, injuries, and fatalities are the indirect
costs associated to corrosion. According to researchers 20–25% of
the annual direct cost of corrosion can be saved by applying the
available technologies [4–5]. Corrosion detection and monitoring
techniques are classified into two categories namely destructive
testing and Nondestructive Testing Techniques (NDT). While per-
forming destructive testing, specimen under test is subjected to
load until its breakdown. Non-destructive testing is to inspect
and evaluate materials without affecting serviceability. Common

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2021.03.024
2090-4479/Ó 2021 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier BV on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al., Corrosion detection and severity level prediction using acoustic emission
and machine learning based approach, Ain Shams Engineering Journal, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2021.03.024
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

NDT techniques for corrosion monitoring include visual testing, Table 1

ultrasonic testing, magnetic flux leakage, eddy current, radio- Comparison of non-destructive testing techniques for corrosion monitoring.

graphic testing and acoustic emission [6–7]. Corrosion Advantages Limitations

Visual methods involve the periodic visual inspection of the Monitoring
structure for any defects and disorders. Common visual methods Technique

for corrosion detection and inspection involves Boroscope and Vision Based Reliable Monitoring Off-line Processing
Charge Couple Devices (CCD) [4]. Visual inspection for long range Inspection Inexpensive Computationally Expensive
Limited Access Issues
systems is a very tedious and labor-intensive task. Pidaparti et al. Magnetic Flux Active type NDT Limited to ferromagnetic
[8] proposed an image processing based technique for classifica- Leakage Fast surface and sub- materials
tion of corrosion defects. Proposed technique used Scanning Elec- surface inspection Alignment between magnetic
tron Microscope (SEM) images of NiAl bronze, exposed in Relatively flux and defects is necessary
Inexpensive
different corrosive and stress environment. Wavelet packet trans-
Guided waves Active type NDT High frequency Ultrasonic
form, and fractal analysis were used as image analysis techniques. Based On-line Monitoring waves are required
Vision based monitoring of corrosion needs offline processing of Inspection Cross-talk issues
images and has physical limitations like accessibility issues. Gloria Expensive
et al. [9] proposed the use of internal corrosion sensor based on Radiographic Active type NDT Safety Hazards
Inspection Not limited by Expensive
magnetic flux leakage and magnetic perturbation [10] technique
Material type Required Interpretation for
for detection of defects caused by internal corrosion in pipelines. Accurate and Reliable Results
Due to defects caused by metal loss, deformation was produced Acoustic Passive type NDT Interpretation of AE is important
in the magnetic flux lines and this deformation was sensed by Emission On-line Monitoring
Relatively
the proposed sensor. Kim et al. [11] proposed eddy current based
Inexpensive
stress corrosion crack detection for gas transmission pipelines
Remote Field Eddy Current (RFEC) based scanning was performed
by moving pick-up coil circumferentially and axially in both direc-
tions. Lowe et al. [12] proposed the use of guided waves [13] for better accuracy and reliability. Saenkhum et al. [24] used acoustic
detection of corrosion under insulation where reflections of guided emission and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for classification of
waves and their arrival time reveals the presence of defects and corrosion. Four features AE energy, amplitude, rise time and count
their axial location. Mokhles et al. [14] proposed Long Range Ultra- extracted from experiments were used as inputs to neural net-
sonic Testing (LRUT) for long distance pipeline inspection. Pro- work. Testing phase of neural network indicates very less misclas-
posed technique used guided ultrasound wavelet for detection sification rate and a very good generalization capability with
and inspection of external and internal metal loss due to corrosion training accuracy to be 96:41% and testing accuracy to be
in pipelines. 94:35%: Hendi et al. [25] proposed the use of ANN for concrete cor-
Acoustic emission (AE) testing detects the high frequency elas- rosion monitoring in sewage systems against the attack of sul-
tic waves produced under stress loading and then conversion of phuric acid. Back Propagation Neural Network (BP-NN) with
these waves to electrical signals. AE testing relies on the energy ini- sigmoidal activation function was trained to predict the metal loss.
tiated within the material or component under test so only receiv- Mean Squared Error (MSE) for mass loss and volume loss are found
ing transducers are required. AE techniques have also been studied to be 0.44 and 1.18 respectively. De Masi et al. [26] predicted rate
for a long time to inspect real large-scale structures as well as to of corrosion, loss of metal, defects area and number of defects in
study fracture mechanics process in laboratory specimen [15]. subsea pipelines using Fitting Neural Network (FNN) based regres-
Carpinteri et al. [16] proposed the use of acoustic emission tech- sion approach. Liao et al. [27] used hybrid machine learning algo-
nique to study fracture propagation and structural damages in rithms for numerical corrosion rate prediction in internal
reinforced concrete structures and further analyzed the AE activity corrosion assessment of gas pipelines. Hybrid neural network
during three-point bending tests on concrete beams with different approaches like Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimized BP-NN, Particle
sizes [17]. Aggelis et al. [18] used acoustic emission monitoring to Swarm Optimization (PSO) optimized BP-NN were used as numer-
classify cracking modes for different types of concretes and found ical prediction model. Network was trained with 7 input neurons,
that the signals emitted at the different fracturing stages exhibit 14 hidden layer neurons and a single output neuron for corrosion
distinct signatures. Droubi et al. [19] proposed the use of acoustic rate prediction. GA optimized BP-NN showed the best corrosion
emission for defect detection and identification in carbon steel prediction rate than other technique based on its least absolute
welded joints. error. Jian et al. [28] proposed the use of machine learning methods
AE, being a passive NDT technique has greater potential to be for determining corrosion types using Electrochemical Noise (EN)
used as corrosion detection and monitoring technique. Kaige Wu measurement. Raw EN data of SS-304 for pitting, uniform and pas-
et al. [20] monitored pitting corrosion of stainless steel with the sivation corrosion was then processed to extract feature vectors
help of acoustic emission of hydrogen bubbles produced in the pit- that includes 10 useful parameters including energy of 7-level
ting process. Patil et al. [21] proposed an acoustic emission based wavelet crystal. BP-NN was used as pattern recognition tool
technique for evaluation of accelerated corrosion testing. Prateep- trained with 10 input neurons, 9 hidden layer neurons and two
asen et al. [22] also monitored the pitting corrosion using acoustic output neurons to minimize the Mean Squared Error (MSE). Net-
emission. Proposed technique used accelerated corrosion testing of work best training performance was achieved in 26 iterations of
SS-304 specimen, having ground surface with silicon carbide training with an MSE reduced to 2.1381
10-6. Confusion matrix
paper, rinsed with distilled water and dried in air. Droubi et al. revealed the classification accuracy of BP-NN to be 99:7%.
[23] recently proposed the use of AE to predict corrosion. Time Structure-borne acoustic emission during the accelerated corro-
domain analysis of AE signals was conducted and correlation sion testing is a reliable method for corrosion detection, however,
between AE Energy and corrosion was found. A comparison of dif- classification of these acoustic emission signals by machine learn-
ferent non-destructive tesing techniques for corrosion monitoring ing techniques is still in its infancy. Considering the advantages
is given below (see Table 1). and disadvantages of current non-destructive testing techniques,
With advancements in the field of machine learning and artifi- objective of this research is to propose acoustic emission and
cial intelligence, focus is to produce hybrid technologies that have machine learning based hybrid, novel and reliable corrosion mon-
2
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

itoring technique. Proposed hybrid approach uses acoustic emis-

sion signals to detect corrosion and then employ machine learning
algorithms for severity level classification. Moreover, frequency
domain Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis of acoustic signals
was performed to identify particular frequency bands of AE signals
that are indicative of the energy released during pitting corrosion.
Novelty of the proposed technique lies in mass loss based corrosion
severity level prediction using machine learning algorithms that
have never been employed before. Utilization of radial basis func-
tion neural network in this regard has never been used by
researchers for this purpose. Skewness and Kurtosis along with tra-
ditional AE features were mixed for this particular task. Next sec-
tions explain the proposed technique, background theory,
experimentation, results and conclusion.

2. Proposed technique
Fig. 2. Architecture of a feed forward neural network [29].
Flow chart in Fig. 1 represents the proposed technique starting
from the mild steel sample preparation followed by accelerated
corrosion testing of that mild steel sample. Acoustic emission weights Vij and Wjk, each input unit receives the input signal xi
released from accelerated corrosion testing of mild steel samples and transmits it to all units in hidden layer. Sum y at each hidden
were collected by AE data acquisition. Acoustic signals were unit is calculated using following equation.
acquired from the accelerated corrosion testing using acoustic sen- X
sor, acquisition hardware and acquisition software Acquired acous- yin ¼ V ji xi þ b
tic signals were processed to extract distinct features of acoustic
where b is bias, and it is the weight whose activation function is
data. These distinct features were used by different machine learn-
always one. At each hidden unit, an activation function is applied
ing algorithms for corrosion severity level prediction.
from following equation and the resulting signal is sent to the out-
put layer.
3. Background theory
1
f ðy Þ ¼
3.1. Back propagation neural network (BP-NN) 1 þ ey

ANN is biologically inspired computational model that mimics zj ¼ f ðyin Þ

biological brain in its working. ANN consists of simple information
processing units that are called as neurons. BP-NN is a multi-layer
feed forward network with interconnected layers, trained with gra-
dient descent method. Threshold, sigmoidal, tan-sigmoidal are
commonly used activation functions. Fig. 2 shows the architecture
of the feed forward neural network.
Back propagation training algorithm involves four basic steps
[30]. During the feed forward stage, network is initialized with
small random values of weights and then these weights are used
to form an output. Network output is compared with the desired
output and an error signal is generated. Error signal is then fed
back into the network layers and weights and biases are updated.
Input layer, hidden layer and output layer of the network are
denoted as i, j and k respectively. X is the input training vector
where X = [x1, x2. . .. . . xn] and T is the desired target vector where
T = [t1, t2. . .. . .tn]. Input layer i is connected to the hidden layer j
through Vij. Hidden layer j and output layer are connected through
weights Wjk. After Initialization of small random value to the
Signal then gets multiplied with the weights of hidden and out-
put layer Wjk using following equation.
X
yink ¼ W ji zj i þ b
Y k ¼ f ðyink Þ
Once each output unit receives output pattern based on the
input pattern, error term is generated using the following equation.
dk ¼ ðt k  yk Þf ðyink Þ
dk is the error term at output unit that is fed to the hidden layer
where further error is calculated using the same way and then
weights and biases are updated.
W jk ðnewÞ ¼ W jk ðoldÞ þ rW jk
rW jk ¼ adk zj
rW jk is the change that is produced in the weight when error is fed
back into the network layers. Where a is learning rate, whose value
lies with in [0–1] range.
Fig. 3 shows the flow chart of the proposed technique using BP-
NN as a classification tool. Acquired signals were processed to
extract distinct features of acoustic data and then these distinct
features were fed to BP-NN. Flow chart briefly describes the steps
involved in configuring, training and testing of the network.

3.2. Radial basis function neural network (RBF-NN)

RBF-NN is a simple three-layered feed forward neural network

with an input layer, hidden layer and output layer. General archi-
Fig. 1. Over view of the proposed technique. tecture of network is shown in Fig. 4.
3
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

GðxÞ ¼ expðx2 Þ
The derivative of the RBF has the following form.
0
G ðxÞ ¼ 2  x  expðx2 Þ

0
G ðxÞ ¼ 2  x  GðxÞ
Firstly, small random values of weights are initialized for the
network connections. Each input neuron receive input signal from
the input data patterns. Network than utilizes the input vectors to
calculate Radial Basis Function and to choose RBF centers. Suffi-
cient numbers of RBF centers need to be designated for adequate
sampling of input vector space. The output of im unit Gi (xi) in
the hidden layer.
!
X
r
 2
Gi ðxi Þ ¼ exp  xji  xji = li
j¼1

Whereas xji ¼ Centre of the RBF unit for input variables,

li = Width of the ith RBF unit, xji ¼ jth variable of input pattern.
Small random weights are initialized to output layer neurons. Out-
put of the network is calculated using following formula.

X
N
H net ¼ wim Gi ðxi Þ þ Z o
Fig. 3. Algorithm of the proposed technique with BP-NN. i¼1

Whereas, Q = number of hidden layer nodes, Hnet = Output value

of mth node in output layer for the nth incoming pattern.
wim = Weight between mth output node and ith radial basis function
unit. Z o = Biasing term at nth output node. Error signal for the net-
work is computed. Network keeps on training until the stopping
criteria is met. Updation of weights and number of iterations can
set as stopping criteria.
Fig. 5 shows the flow chart of the proposed technique using
RBF-NN as machine learning classifier. Acquired signals were pro-
cessed to extract distinct features of acoustic data and then these
distinct features were fed to RBF-NN. Flow chart briefly describes
the steps involved in intializion, weight updation and testing of
the network.

Fig. 4. Architecture of multilayer feed forward RBF-NN [31].

RBF-NN uses Gaussian potential function as its activation func-

tion [30–31]. The number of neurons in input and output layer
depends upon the features of the dataset and number of output
classes respectively. Hidden layer and the output layer are con-
nected with connections known as weights. Functions of the form
of following equations are considered as Radial Basis Functions
(RBF).
dðr Þ ¼ r

dðr Þ ¼ r 2

dðr Þ ¼ r 3

dðr Þ ¼ expðr 2 Þ
Training algorithm [29] of RBF-NN is given below. Difference
between output and target is the error signal. Training involves
the Updation of weights to minimize the error signal. Gaussian
activation function is used by the radial basis function which gives
non-negative values for all the values of v. Fig. 5. Algorithm of proposed technique with RBF-NN.

4
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al.
3.3. Naive Bayes classifier
Naive Bayes classifier is the statistical classifier that uses the
Bayes theorem probability theory as its base. Naive Bayes classifier
is different from conventional classifiers because it involves calcu-
lation of posterior probability of classes hence reducing its compu-
tational complexity and does not involve any training unlike neural
networks based classifiers [30]. Bayes theorem make use prior
probability that is the original probability of a hypothesis or event
without any additional information. Prior probabilities are used to
find posterior probabilities which are the revised probabilities of
an event after getting additional information about the event
[32]. Bayes Theorem can be explained using following equations.
PðYjX ÞPðX Þ
PðXjY Þ ¼
PðY Þ
P ðYjX ÞP ðX Þ
PðXY Þ ¼
PðYjX Þ
P ðX Þ þ PðY j  X Þ
PðX Þ
PðXÞ is the probability of X, PðYÞ is the probability of Y without
having knowledge about event
, PðXjY Þ is the posterior probabil-
ity of
given Y and PðYjXÞ is the posterior probability of Y given x.
PðXÞ is the probability of X being false and PðYj  XÞ is the prob-
ability of Y given x is false. The Naive Bayes Classifier assumes that
the effect of each feature on a class is statistically independent of
all other features that is known as class conditional independence
and is made to simplify computation. Best performance of Naive
Bayes classifier is achieved when the features are completely inde-
pendent of each other. Fig. 6 shows the flow chart of the proposed
technique using Naïve Bayes algorithm as a classification tool.
4. Experimentation
4.1. Experimentation setup and data acquisition
Experiments were conducted in Embedded Systems Lab of col-
lege of EME, National University of Sciences and Technology,
Islamabad, Pakistan. More than twenty experiments were per-
formed in which mild steel samples were used for accelerated cor-
Fig. 6. Algorithm of proposed technique with Naive Bayes.
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Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx
rosion testing for different time spans ranging from one to four
hours.
In order to prepare samples for testing, the surface of mild steel
samples were ground with aluminum oxide abrasive grinding
wheel to remove the protective layer. Grinding of the specimen
opens up the grain structure so that it can be directly exposed
for accelerated corrosion. Mild steel samples were submerged in
3% sodium bi-carbonate, hydrochloric acid and water solution,
attached with a DC power supply of24V, drawing maximum of 2
Amp current depending upon the concentration of the solution.
The acoustic emission produced during pitting corrosion pro-
cess lies in high frequency ranges [20–22], so, to avoid aliasing, sig-
nals were acquired at higher sampling rates of250 kHz to fulfill the
Nyquist criteria. Data acquisition system involves wide band
acoustic sensor, pre amplifiers, NI Elvis kit and Lab view interface.
Structure borne acoustic emission signals for the process were
acquired using Sound Well CG80 wide-band acoustic sensor. High
frequency acoustic signals were initially amplified with the use of
pre-amplifiers through 40 dB gain. NI Elvis kit and Lab view soft-
ware interface were integrated to acquire high frequency acoustic
signals. AE signals were recorded for a time interval of two seconds
at the start of experiment. Data acquisition process was repeated
after a time span of fifteen minutes for the accelerated corrosion
process. Values of amplitude acquired in a single data acquisition
run are further preprocessed by windowing operation of suitable
size. Logged data files were read through Matlab for further
analysis.
Fig. 7 shows the samples after accelerated corrosion test for dif-
ferent time spans. A clear difference in the physical appearance of
sample before corrosion and after accelerated corrosion test can be
observed. To further verify the corrosion process, microscopic
examinations of specimens were conducted after accelerated cor-
rosion testing. The optical study was performed using OLYMPUS
MICROCOSPE BX51. Microscopic images at different zoom levels
revealed the presence of corrosion layer and provide the evidence
on the formation of pitting and the disintegration of metal.
Fig. 8 shows the microscopic image of the specimen after being
subjected to accelerated corrosion testing. It shows the presence of
corrosion layer that form a passive film on the surface of specimen.
Several pit nuclei or embryos are evident at the surface of the spec-
imen. Metastable growth of these pit nuclei forms a stable pit and
cause irreversible damage to the material. Fig. 9 is evident of a
more stable pit and several pit nuclei at the surface of the
specimen.
4.2. Mass loss calculations
Besides the changes in physical appearance of samples and con-
firmation of corrosion layer after microscopic examination of sam-
ples, mass loss calculations for each sample before and after
accelerated corrosion testing was performed. Table 2 shows the
mass loss statistics of different samples subjected to corrosion test-
ing. Percentage mass loss from samples and the variation of data
Fig. 7. Images of samples after accelerated corrosion testing.
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

from mean has also been calculated and logged. Increasing mass
loss was observed with the passage of time as accelerated corro-
sion progressed.
Fig. 10 represents the plot of percentage mass loss occurred
during accelerated corrosion testing versus the experimentation
time. Error bars in the the plot show the variability in data of mass
loss for different hours. Large error bar for percentage mass loss
against one hour experiment is due to a bigger scatter in mass loss
for this type of experiments. Blue line represent the trend which
suggests that mass loss increases almost linearly as the experimen-
tation time goes on. The rate of mass loss for accelerated corrosion
testing of mild steel samples is highest in first hour of experiment
and the rate of percentage mass loss tends to decrease as the time
goes on. Production of corrosion passive films that further resist
the formation of pit would be the possible reasons for drop in rate
of percentage mass loss in prolonged tests.

4.3. Time domain analysis of AE signals

Fig. 8. Microscopic image of sample after accelerated corrosion testing.

AE activity during accelerated corrosion testing of the samples

was monitored through the acquisition setup. Raw acoustic signals
were plotted to establish correlation between AE activity and the
on-going corrosion process.
Figs. 11–15 show the plots of AE signals acquired at the start of
experiment and then after time interval of every fifteen minutes.
Time domain analysis of these signals reveals that accumulative
signal amplitude tends to rise as the corrosion process matures.
Increasing signal amplitude with increasing experiment time is
evident of AE energy released during the breakage of passive films
and eventually forming pits. Rising accumulative signal amplitude
is suggestive of the energy released during the pitting corrosion at
the surface of specimen, leading to mass loss.

4.4. Frequency domain analysis of AE signals

Frequency of acoustic emission during the pitting corrosion

process is good indicator of passive layer breakage. Data acquired
during experimentation was in time domain, so, Fourier analysis
Fig. 9. Microscopic image of sample after accelerated corrosion testing. was used to visualize acoustic signals in frequency domain. Fast
Fourier Transform (FFT) of a signal is representation of its fre-

Table 2
Mass loss statistics after accelerated corrosion testing.

Sample. No Mass Before (gram) Mass After (gram) Mass Loss (gram) Percentage Mass Loss Deviation from Mean
Time Exposed 1 h
2 9.75 9.29 0.46 4.71 0.06
3 9.82 9.1 0.72 7.33 2.68
4 10.12 9.7 0.42 4.15 0.50
6 10.15 9.9 0.47 4.63 0.02
10 10.2 9.8 0.4 3.92 0.73
11 9.4 9.1 0.3 3.19 1.47
Averaged 4.65%
Time Exposed 2 h
1 9.64 8.93 0.71 7.36 0.34
8 10.82 9.9 0.92 8.5 0.80
9 10.35 9.6 0.75 7.24 0.46
Averaged 7.70%
Time Exposed 3 h
5 11.82 10.5 1.32 11.1 0.88
7 10.55 9.47 1.08 10.2 0.02
12 10.8 9.79 1.01 9.35 0.87
Averaged 10.21%
Time Exposed 4 h
14 10.55 9.3 1.25 11.84%

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Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

Percenatge Mass Loss Vs Experiment Time

20
Percentage Mass Loss

15

10

0
0 1 2 3 4 5
Experiment Time (Hours)

Fig. 10. Plot of percentage mass loss vs experiment time.

Fig. 13. Time domain plot of acoustic signal acquired after 30 min.

Fig. 11. Time domain plot of acoustic signal acquired at the start of experiment.

Fig. 14. Time domain plot of acoustic signal acquired after 45 min.

Fig. 12. Time domain plot of acoustic signal acquired after 15 min.

quency versus amplitude. FFT of the acquired acoustic signals were

calculated using Matlab script. Higher frequency peaks are
observed in FFTs of the acoustic signal confirming the on-going
corrosion process.
Figs. 16–20 show the FFT plots of AE signals acquired at the Fig. 15. Time domain plot of acoustic signal acquired after 60 min.
start of experiment and then at time interval of fifteen minutes.
FFT of acoustic signal acquired at start of experiment is clearly dis- clearly distinguishable from the AE signals acquired at later stage
tinguishable from FFTs of the acoustic signals acquired in later of experiment. Higher frequency peaks in the range of 60 kHz are
stages of the experiment. At the start of the experiment, most of evident in AE signals once the mechanism of pitting initiate. Higher
the AE activity lies in low frequency range. As the time of acceler- frequency peaks observed in FFTs of the later stage acoustic signals
ated corrosion test goes on, AE activity in higher frequency range are indicative of the passive layer breakage and relate to the mate-
can be observed. FFT of AE signal at the start of experiment is rial loss from the surface of the specimen.
7
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 16. FFT of acoustic signal acquired at start of experiment. Fig. 19. FFT of acoustic signal acquired after 45 min.

Fig. 17. FFT of acoustic signal acquired after 15 mins.

Fig. 20. FFT of acoustic signal acquired after 1 h.

4.5. Distinct features of AE signals

Proposed technique extracts distinct features from AE activity

and fed them to a machine learning classifier to predict corrosion
severity levels. AE Mean, AE RMS and AE Energy were computed
along with statistical features Skewness and Kurtosis, whereas,
AE mean and AE RMS are referred to as the signal amplitude mea-
sured in Volts. Skewness is a measure of symmetry or the lack of
symmetry around the mean in a data. Kurtosis is a measure of
whether the data is heavy-tailed or light-tailed relative to a normal
distribution. Skewness and Kurtosis are unit-free and dimension-
less attributes given by following equations:
  3
1 XN Xi  X
Skewness ¼ ½ 
N i¼1 r
  4
1X N Xi  X
Kurtosis ¼ ½ 
N i¼1 r
Fig. 18. FFT of acoustic signal acquired after 30 min.

8
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

where X is a random variable with N observations starting from (i =


1,2,3. . .,N), Xi is the ith sample of variable X, X is the mean and r is
the standard deviation.
As the corrosion process starts and mature with time, signifi-
cant changes in the values of these extracted features were
observed. The data was sampled at a rate of 250 kHz for two sec-
onds. Therefore, the total number of samples recorded for a period
of two seconds were 500000 samples. AE features were calculated
for a window size of 10,000 samples each, therefore, the total num-
ber of values for each extracted features are 50. AE Mean is the
averaged value of acoustic signal obtained over a window size.
AE RMS is the root mean squared values of acoustic emission signal
over a specified window size.
Figs. 21–23 shows the averaged values of extracted features,
namely, AE Mean, AE RMS and AE Energy over the acquired signal
length. At the start of experiment, values of these extracted fea-
tures are at their possible low and tends to rise as metal loss occurs
due to pitting. Correlation is observed between the values of these
extracted features and the corrosion process. Hence, these features
namely AE Mean, AE RMS and AE Energy are found to be distinct Fig. 23. Bar graph of averaged Energy extracted from acoustic signals.

features because their values rise proportionally as corrosion pro-

cess. Two statistical features, namely, Skewness and Kurtosis were
extracted from the acquired AE signals. Figs. 24 and 25 shows the
averaged Kurtosis and Skewness level versus experiment time.
Change in the values of Kurtosis is quite distinguishable as com-
pared to Skewness. Values of Skewness over the experimentation
time are quite stagnant, hence cannot be considered as a good indi-
cator of the corrosion process. On the other hand, Kurtosis is
observed as distinct feature due to its better correlation with the
corrosion process. Therefore, AE Mean, AE Energy, AE RMS and Kur-
tosis were identified as distinct features of the AE activity as they
show correlation with the corrosion process and mass loss.

5. Classification results

5.1. Corrosion severity prediction

Multi-class classification problem involves the classification of

corrosion severity levels. Classes were assigned based on the
experiment time and the mass loss occurred during accelerated
Fig. 21. Bar graph of averaged Mean extracted from acoustic signals.
corrosion testing. Sample 14 was subjected to accelerated corro-
sion testing for four hours and its acoustic emission data was

Fig. 22. Bar graph of averaged RMS extracted from acoustic signals. Fig. 24. Bar graph of averaged Kurtosis extracted from acoustic signals.

9
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

outcome where the model correctly predicts the negative class.

A false positive is an outcome where the model incorrectly predicts
the positive class. And a false negative is an outcome where the
model incorrectly predicts the negative class.
These parameters can be calculated using equations below.
TP þ TN
Accuracy ¼
TP þ TN þ FP þ FN

TP
Precision ¼
TP þ FP

TP
Recall ¼
TP þ FN

ðPrecision  RecallÞ
Fscore ¼ 2
ðPrecision þ RecallÞ

Fig. 25. Bar graph of averaged Skewness extracted from acoustic signals.
recorded at start of the experiment for two seconds with sampling
frequency of 250 kHz. Data acquisition process was repeated after
a time span of one hour for the accelerated corrosion process.
Table 3 shows the distinct extracted features of acoustic emission
signals recorded for four hour testing of sample 14.
For corrosion severity level prediction, five classes that have
been made, presents ‘‘no corrosion”, ‘‘Grade 1”, ‘‘Grade 2”, ‘‘Grade
3” and ‘‘Grade 4” based on the mass loss difference for each
‘‘Grade”. Acoustic signal acquired at the start of experiment is asso-
ciated with ‘‘no corrosion” as there is no mass loss at that time.
‘‘Grade 1” is associated with 4:65% mass loss, ‘‘Grade 2” is associ-
ated with 7:70% mass loss and so forth as calculated after acceler-
ated corrosion testing of these samples. Arithmetic patterns were
set as targets. RBF-NN, BP-NN and Naïve Bayes algorithms were
used as machine learning classifiers and were investigated for bet-
ter classification performance.
Performance of a classifier for multi-class classification problem
can be shown by Accuracy, Precision, Recall and Fscore. All these
performance parameters depend upon the True Positive (TP), False
Positive (FP), True Negative (TN) and False Negative (FN) of the
tested data. A true positive is an outcome where the model cor-
rectly predicts the positive class. Similarly, a true negative is an
TP
Sensitivity ¼
TP þ FN
The architecture of RBF-NN applied on five-class corrosion
severity level classification problem consists of 4 input neurons
and 5 output neurons. Network achieved MSE of 0:0005372 in
225 epochs with 249 hidden layer neurons Table 4 shows the con-
fusion matrix of the RBF-NN and reveals 100%classification accu-
racy. Performance parameters of RBF-NN applied on five class
problem have been summarized in the Table 5.
Table 6 shows the results of BP-NN applied on five-class corro-
sion severity level classification problem. Table shows the accuracy
and MSE at different number of hidden layer neurons and number
of epochs with an averaged accuracy of 94:57% for BP-NN. Five
classes that have been made, presents ‘‘no corrosion”, ‘‘Grade 1”,
‘‘Grade 2”, ‘‘Grade 3” and ‘‘Grade 4” based on the mass loss differ-
ence for each ‘‘Grade”. BP-NN showed highest accuracy of 97:2%
with 60 hidden layer neurons and an MSE of 0:00796. Performance
parameters of BP-NN for highest accuracy are summarized in
Table 7.
Naive Bayes classifier applied on different samples of five-class
corrosion severity level classification problem with an averaged
accuracy of 90:4%: Table 8 shows the performance parameters of
Naive Bayes classifier like precision, recall, Fscore and accuracy
for five-class classification problem of corrosion severity level
prediction.
Fig. 26 shows the overall accuracy comparison of RBF-NN, BP-
NN and Naive Bayes Classifier applied on corrosion detection and

Table 3
Distinct features of dataset.

Mean RMS Kurtosis Skewness Energy

At start 4.18E05 9.14E04 65.6993 0.5706 0.4192
After 1 hr 2.81E04 0.0022 9.4316 0.106 2.4377
After 2 hr 3.26E04 0.0019 12.5481 0.0886 1.9035
After 3 hr 3.35E04 0.0017 5.9878 0.0154 1.4652
After 4 hr 3.53E04 0.0012 13.3582 0.078 0.737

Table 4
Confusion Matrix for RBF-NN for Corrosion Severity Level Prediction.

Actual Class
Predicted Class N = 250 No corrosion Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4
No 50 0 0 0 0
Grade 1 0 50 0 0 0
Grade 2 0 0 50 0 0
Grade 3 0 0 0 50 0
Grade 4 0 0 0 0 50

10
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 5
Performance parameter of RBF-NN.

No Corrosion Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4

Precision 1 1 1 1 1
Recall 1 1 1 1 1
F score 1 1 1 1 1
Accuracy 1 1 1 1 1

Table 6
Results of BP-NN applied on five class corrosion severity level problem.

S.NO Sample HN Accuracy (%) MSE Epoch

1 14 10 94.8 0.057166 54
20 94.4 0.027748 46
30 92 0.032199 20
40 95.6 0.042211 46
50 95.2 0.040906 44
60 97.2 0.007976 70
70 92.8 0.048229 27
249 94.8 0.805022 33
Averaged= (94.57)

HN = Hidden Neurons.

Table 7
Performance parameter of BP-NN.

No Corrosion Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4

Precision 1 1 0.94 0.92 1
Recall 1 1 0.94 0.939 0.98
F score 1 1 0.94 0.929 0.989
Accuracy 1 1 0.976 0.984 0.996

Table 8
Performance parameter of Naive Bayes.

No Corrosion Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4

Precision 1 0.942 0.937 0.734 0.961
Recall 1 0.981 0.64 0.94 1
F score 1 0.963 0.731 0.8251 0.98
Accuracy 1 0.984 0.912 0.92 0.992

Bayes classifier due to its probabilistic nature have not been able
to well handle the inter-class mixed data and showed the least
accurate results. On the other hand, radial basis function neural
network showed good generalization capability due to the pres-
ence of Gaussian potential functions as activation functions in
the hidden layer neuron and showed the highest accuracy for cor-
rosion severity level classification problem.

6. Conclusion

The aim of the research is to propose a hybrid technique, which

Fig. 26. Overall accuracy comparison of classifiers.
corrosion severity level prediction. It is evident from the figure that
RBF-NN outperformed other two classifiers in terms of accuracy.
Classifiers showed a higher classification rate overall, possible
reasons for overall high classification rate are the distinct features
of acoustic emission data and less variability in the data. Naive
11
detects corrosion through acoustic emission and predicts corrosion
severity levels with high accuracy using machine learning algo-
rithms. Laboratory based experimentation setup was established
for accelerated corrosion testing of mild steel samples for different
time spans and mass loss of samples were recorded. Acoustic emis-
sion signals were acquired at high frequency sampling rate with
Sound Well AE sensor, NI Elvis kit and NI Labview software. Fast
Fourier Transform of acoustic signals confirms the high frequency
band during corrosion process. AE Mean, AE RMS, AE Energy and
kurtosis were selected as distinct features and represent a linear
relationship with the corrosion process. Three different algorithms,
BP-NN, RBF-NN and probability theorem based naive bayes classi-
fier have been investigated for corrosion severity level prediction.
Five Corrosion severity levels have been made based on mass loss
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al.
during accelerated corrosion testing. RBF-NN outperformed BP-NN
and Naive Bayes classifier and showed better performance. One of
the possible reason for better performance of RBF-NN is the pres-
ence of non-linear Gaussian activation functions in hidden layer
neurons of the network. The reason for the worst performance of
Naive Bayes classifier for multi-class problem lies in its probabilis-
tic nature and does not show better efficiency when there is inter-
class mixed data. Future work involves the further investigation of
acoustic emission signals produced during prolonged accelerated
corrosion testing and classification of these signals through unsu-
pervised learning.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
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Muhammad Fahad Sheikh received the B.E. degree in
mechatronics engineering from the AIR University,
Islamabad in 2014, and the master’s degree in mecha-
tronics engineering from National University of Sciences
and Technology (NUST), Islamabad in 2018. He has
previously worked as a trainee engineer at Pakistan
Aeronautical Complex, a premier organization respon-
sible for the manufacturing of JF-17 thunder fighter jet.
He is currently serving as a Lecturer with department of
mechanical engineering, University of Management and
Technology, Pakistan.
His areas of interest are mechatronics, machine learn-
ing, structural health monitoring, and preventive
maintenance.
Dr. Khurram Kamal received the B.E. degree in
mechanical engineering from the NED University of
Engineering and Technology, Karachi, in 2001, the
master’s degree in computer science from the Univer-
sity of Karachi, in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree in
mechatronics from Loughborough University, U.K., in
2008. He was an Assistant Manager of Production
Planningand Control with the Press Shop Department,
Pakistan Suzuki Motor Company Ltd., from 2003 to2004.
From 2009 to 2010, he was an Assistant Professor with
the Department of Mechatronics Engineering College of
E&ME, National University of Sciences and Technology,
Islamabad, Pakistan. From 2010 to 2012, he was a Senior
Lecturer with the Department of Mechatronics Engi-
neering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia. From 2012 to 2017
he served as Assistant professor at Department of Mechatronics Engineering College
of E&ME National University of Sciences and Technology. He is currently an Asso-
ciate Professor with the Department of Engineering Sciences, National University of
Sciences and Technology.
His areas of interest are mechatronics, artificial intelligence, image processing,
embedded systems, pavement health monitoring, intelligent machines, condition-
based maintenance, unmanned aerial vehicles, and sustainability.
Faheem Rafique, completed his bachelors in completed
his bachelors in Mechatronics engineering from
National University of Sciences and Technology, Islam-
abad in 2017. His research interests are data acquisition
and machine learning.
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, K. Kamal, F. Rafique et al.
Salman Sabir, completed his bachelors in Mechatronics
engineering from National University of Sciences and
Technology, Islamabad in 2017. He is currently pursuing
his masters in mechatronics engineering from Wah
Engineering College, Pakistan. He is also serving as a lab
engineer at Wah engineering college.
Hassan Zaheer completed his bachelors in completed
his bachelors in Mechatronics engineering from
National University of Sciences and Technology, Islam-
abad in 2017. His research interests are manufacturing
and materials.
13
Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx
Dr. Muhammad Kashif Khan completed his bachelors
in Mechanical Engineering from NED university, Kar-
achi. He was awarded a PhD scholarship from UK, in
2006, on a project funded by Airbus, Germany. The
project was a joint consortium of Airbus, The Open
University, UK and Cranfield University, UK. He was
selected for two years postdoctoral study in Sichuan
University, China through ‘‘Young International Scien-
tist Award 2011” from National Science Foundation of
China (NSFC). He joined the Coventry University in
August 2015 as Lecturer in Aerospace Structures. e has
worked in different aerospace companies and has pub-
lished numerous papers on residual stresses, light
weight engineering alloys, honeycomb structures and
their behavior up to extremely high loading cycles
(10e9-10e12).