This thesis provides an innovative strategy for rail crack monitoring using the acoustic emission (AE) technique. The field study presented is a significant improvement on laboratory studies in the literature in terms of complex rail profile and crack conditions as well as high operational noise. AE waves induced by crack propagation, crack closure, wheel-rail impact and operational noise were obtained through a series of laboratory and field tests, and analyzed by wavelet transform (WT) and synchrosqueezed wavelet transform (SWT). A wavelet power-based index and the enhanced SWT scalogram were sequentially proposed to classify AE waves induced by different mechanisms according to their energy distributions in the time-frequency domain. A novel crack sizing method taking advantage of crack closure-induced AE waves was developed based on fatigue tests in the laboratory. The propagation characteristics of AE waves in the rail were investigated, and Tsallis synchrosqueezed wavelet entropy (TSWE) with time was finally brought forward to detect and locate rail cracks in the field. The proposed strategy for detection, location and sizing of rail cracks helps to ensure the safe and smooth operation of the railway system. This thesis is of interest to graduate students, researchers and practitioners in the area of structural health monitoring.

The book provides readers with a snapshot of recent research and industrial trends in field of industrial acoustics and vibration. Each chapter, accepted after a rigorous peer-review process, reports on a selected, original piece of work presented and discussed at International Conference on Acoustics and Vibration (ICAV2016), which was organized by the Tunisian Association of Industrial Acoustics and Vibration (ATAVI) and held March 21-23, in Hammamet, Tunisia. The contributions, mainly written by north African authors, covers advances in both theory and practice in a variety of subfields, such as: smart materials and structures; fluid-structure interaction; structural acoustics as well as computational vibro-acoustics and numerical methods. Further topics include: engines control, noise identification, robust design, flow-induced vibration and many others.This book provides a valuable resource for both academics and professionals dealing with diverse issues in applied mechanics. By combining advanced theories with industrial issues, it is expected to facilitate communication and collaboration between different groups of researchers and technology users.

Sound-Power Flow: A practitioner's handbook for sound intensity is a guide for practitioners and research scientists in different areas of acoustical science. There are three fundamental quantities in acoustics: sound pressure, sound particle velocity, and sound intensity. This book is about sound intensity and demonstrates the advantages and uses of acoustical sensing compared with other forms of sensing. It describes applications such as: measuring total sound power; directional hearing of humans and mammals; echolocation; measuring sound-power flow in ducts; and uses of non-contact, focused, high-frequency, pulse-echo ultrasonic probes. This book presents computational approaches using standard mathematics, and relates these to the measurement of sound-power flow in air and water. It also uses linear units rather than logarithmic units - this making computation in acoustics simpler and more accessible to advanced mathematics and computing. The book is based on work by the author and his associates at General Motors, the University of Mississippi, and Sonometrics.

The iconic, must-have guide for modern handcraft artisans, Blacksmith's Craft has been teaching the fundamentals of blacksmithing since 1952 for good reason. Traditional tools and techniques of the craft will never change and learning the classic cornerstones of the trade is crucial to fully understanding the behavior of iron and steel. The first in its series, this facsimile volume of the seminal British textbook includes 37 lessons, crisp photography, descriptive captions, and all the timelessly essential knowledge a beginner needs to practice and become a skilled blacksmith, from understanding the parts of the hearth, blast, and anvil to creating T-shaped pocket welds. With the modern resurgence in interest, Blacksmith's Craft is the primary, go-to source to learn the skills, tools, methods, and techniques from inside a blacksmith forge.

In this work, the authors present a fully statistical approach to model non--native speakers' pronunciation. Second-language speakers pronounce words in multiple different ways compared to the native speakers. Those deviations, may it be phoneme substitutions, deletions or insertions, can be modelled automatically with the new method presented here.

The methods is based on a discrete hidden Markov model as a word pronunciation model, initialized on a standard pronunciation dictionary. The implementation and functionality of the methodology has been proven and verified with a test set of non-native English in the regarding accent.

The book is written for researchers with a professional interest in phonetics and automatic speech and speaker recognition.

The work presented in this book focuses on modeling audiovisual quality as perceived by the users of IP-based solutions for video communication like videotelephony. It also extends the current framework for the parametric prediction of audiovisual call quality. The book addresses several aspects related to the quality perception of entire video calls, namely, the quality estimation of the single audio and video modalities in an interactive context, the audiovisual quality integration of these modalities and the temporal pooling of short sample-based quality scores to account for the perceptual quality impact of time-varying degradations.

E.F.F. Chladni's experiments and observations with sound and vibrations profoundly influenced the development of the field of Acoustics. The famous Chladni diagrams along with other observations are contained in Die Akustik, published in German in 1802 and Traite d'Acoustique, a greatly expanded version, published in French in 1809. This is the first comprehensive translation of the expanded French version of Traite d'Acoustique, using the 1802 German publication for reference and clarification. The translation was undertaken by Robert T. Beyer, PhD (1920-2008), noted acoustician, Professor of Physics at Brown University, and Gold Medal recipient of the Acoustical Society of America. Along with many other projects completed over the course of his career, Dr. Beyer translated Von Neumann's seminal work, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics from the original German, spent 30 years translating Russian physics treatises and journals, served as editor of the English translation of the Soviet Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics, and also authored Sounds of our Times: Two Hundred Years of Acoustics.

This book presents computational methods for extracting the useful information from audio signals, collecting the state of the art in the field of sound event and scene analysis. The authors cover the entire procedure for developing such methods, ranging from data acquisition and labeling, through the design of taxonomies used in the systems, to signal processing methods for feature extraction and machine learning methods for sound recognition. The book also covers advanced techniques for dealing with environmental variation and multiple overlapping sound sources, and taking advantage of multiple microphones or other modalities. The book gives examples of usage scenarios in large media databases, acoustic monitoring, bioacoustics, and context-aware devices. Graphical illustrations of sound signals and their spectrographic representations are presented, as well as block diagrams and pseudocode of algorithms.

This volume collects the papers from the World Conference on Acoustic Emission 2015 (WCAE-2015) in Hawaii. The latest research and applications of Acoustic Emission (AE) are explored, with particular emphasis on detecting and processing of AE signals, development of AE instrument and testing standards, AE of materials, engineering structures and systems, including the processing of collected data and analytical techniques as well as experimental case studies.

Shallow water acoustics (SWA), the study of how low and medium frequency sound propagates and scatters on the continental shelves of the worlds oceans, has both technical interest and a large number of practical applications. Technically, shallow water poses an interesting medium for the study of acoustic scattering, inverse theory, and propagation physics in a complicated oceanic waveguide. Practically, shallow water acoustics has interest for geophysical exploration, marine mammal studies, and naval applications. Additionally, one notes the very interdisciplinary nature of shallow water acoustics, including acoustical physics, physical oceanography, marine geology, and marine biology. In this specialized volume the authors, all of whom have extensive at-sea experience in US and Russian research efforts, have tried to summarize the main experimental, theoretical, and computational results in shallow water acoustics, with an emphasis on providing physical insight into the topics presented.

"...a comprehensive and well written book, which...will be useful reading for both researchers entering the field and experienced specialists looking for new ideas....a valuable and long-lasting contribution to experimental mechanics." - Stepan Lomov, KU Leuven This expert volume, an enhanced Habilitation thesis by the head of the Materials Testing Research Group at the University of Augsburg, provides detailed coverage of a range of inspection methods for insitu characterization of fiber-reinforced composites. The failure behavior of fiber reinforced composites is a complex evolution of microscopic damage phenomena. Beyond the use of classical testing methods, the ability to monitor the progression of damage insitu offers new ways to interpret the materials failure modes. Methods covered include digital image correlation, acoustic emission, electromagnetic emission, computed tomography, thermography, shearography, and promising method combinations. For each method, the discussion includes operational principles and practical applications for quality control as well as thoughtful assessment of the method's strengths and weakness so that the reader is equipped to decide which method or methods are most appropriate in a given situation. The book includes extensive appendices covering common experimental parameters influencing comparability of acoustic emission measurements; materials properties for modeling; and an overview of terms and abbreviations.

This thesis investigates the sound generated by solid bodies in steady subsonic flows with unsteady perturbations, as is typically used when determining the noise generated by turbulent interactions. The focus is predominantly on modelling the sound generated by blades within an aircraft engine, and the solutions are presented as asymptotic approximations. Key analytical techniques, such as the Wiener-Hopf method, and the matched asymptotic expansion method are clearly detailed. The results allow for the effect of variations in the steady flow or blade shape on the noise generated to be analysed much faster than when solving the problem numerically or considering it experimentally.

Senior level/graduate level text/reference presenting state-of-the- art numerical techniques to solve the wave equation in heterogeneous fluid-solid media. Numerical models have become standard research tools in acoustic laboratories, and thus computational acoustics is becoming an increasingly important branch of ocean acoustic science. The first edition of this successful book, written by the recognized leaders of the field, was the first to present a comprehensive and modern introduction to computational ocean acoustics accessible to students. This revision, with 100 additional pages, completely updates the material in the first edition and includes new models based on current research. It includes problems and solutions in every chapter, making the book more useful in teaching (the first edition had a separate solutions manual). The book is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students of acoustics, geology and geophysics, applied mathematics, ocean engineering or as a reference in computational methods courses, as well as professionals in these fields, particularly those working in government (especially Navy) and industry labs engaged in the development or use of propagating models.

Aero and Vibroacoustics of Automotive Turbochargers is a topic involving aspects from the working fields of thermodynamics of turbomachinery, aerodynamics, rotordynamics, and noise propagation computation. In this broadly interdisciplinary subject, thermodynamics of turbomachinery is used to design the turbocharger and to determine its operating conditions. Aerodynamics is needed to study the compressor flow dynamics and flow instabilities of rotating stall and surge, which can produce growling and whining-type noises. Rotordynamics is necessary to study rotor unbalance and self-excited oil-whirl instabilities, which lead to whistling and constant tone-type noises in rotating floating oil-film type bearings. For the special case of turbochargers using ball bearings, some high-order harmonic and wear noises also manifest in the rotor operating range. Lastly, noise propagation computation, based on Lighthill's analogy, is required to investigate airborne noises produced by turbochargers in passenger vehicles. The content of this book is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduates in mechanical engineering, research scientists and practicing engineers who want to better understand the interactions between these working fields and the resulting impact on the interesting topic of Aero and Vibroacoustics of Automotive Turbochargers.