Journal of AE, Volume 27, 2009 (ca. 35 MB) - AEWG

eference in that document to see if it pertained in any way to AE, which often led to some earlier
publication on the subject. Those that looked promising, I would order a copy through my library. Those
documents that were published in a language other than English, I would have translated into English.
In 1990, I wrote an article entitled “Anecdotal History of Acoustic Emission from Wood” for publication
in the Journal of Acoustic Emission. During my search for material, a number of references led me to
what I believe was the first article ever written on a study of acoustic emission from wood by Prof.
Fuyuhiko Kishinouye. The article was published in 1934 in the Japanese seismological journal Jishin,
with an English version published in 1937 in the Bulletin of the Earthquake Research Institute, Tokyo
Imperial University. The reference was found in an article by Prof. Kiyoo Mogi, who was at the
Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo. He stated, “The elastic shocks caused by the fracture
of solid materials were measured by F. Kishinouye for the purpose of investigation of earthquakes. He
(Kishinouye) described the process of shock occurrences in wood specimens under flexural stress.”
Prof. Kishinouye had designed and performed a series of Gedanken, or thought experiments to amplify
and record the many rapid, inaudible vibrations and cracking sounds produced by the fracture of wood, in
order to study the fracture of the earth’s crust as the cause of earthquakes, and solve the problem of timedistribution
of earthquakes and, in particular, the Ito earthquake swarm that had occurred between
February and June of 1930.
The apparatus for the experiment consisted of a phonograph pickup using a steel needle inserted into the
tension side of a wooden board to which a bending stress was applied to cause fracture. Kishinouye
stated: “When the board cracked, electric current was generated in the coil of the pick-up, the current
being amplified with an amplifier, which formed a part of the Haeno radio-seismograph. The current was
recorded with an oscillograph on cinematographic films.....As bending proceeded, cracking sounds were
heard, while the oscillograms recorded many inaudible vibrations. The process of fracture varied with the
velocity of bending, the kind of wood, the grain of the board, and the moisture content of the wooden
board.....When the materials were the same and velocity of bending equal, the board broke with nearly
equal deformation....When deformation proceeded slowly, occasionally loud creaking sounds were heard
owing to rupture of the grains, and low silent vibrations were found on the oscillogram.....It was found
that the process of fracture is affected considerably by the condition of the experimented material and the
particular way in which the force acts.”
It is unfortunate that the pioneering instrumented AE experiment Prof. Kishinouye conceived and
performed was published in a journal in a field of technology outside the realm of AE scientists and
engineers. However, the significant accomplishment we do credit Prof. Kishinouye with, is that the
oscillograms he made were the first acoustic emission waveforms ever recorded.
But, the birth of traditional acoustic emission would then have to wait until 1950 for the research work of
Joseph Kaiser in Germany, and publication of his doctoral dissertation. In 1954 a copy of Kaiser’s
dissertation was translated for Brad Schofield in the U.S., who repeated and expanded on Kaiser’s
experiments, which he published in a series of reports entitled “Acoustic Emission Under Applied
Stress.” These publications precipitated research in a number of laboratories throughout the U.S. By the
1960s, we find AE research being performed in many countries throughout the world.
Thus we moved into what I call the Golden Age of AE with the formation of the first three working
groups: the Acoustic Emission Working Group in 1967, the Japanese Committee on Acoustic Emission in
1969, and the European Working Group on Acoustic Emission in 1972.
I will elaborate on just one of these working groups, the one here in Japan. It all started here in Kyoto in
the summer of 1969, at the International Institute of Welding Conference where the term Acoustic
Emission was mentioned in several of the papers and in some of the discussions. This piqued the interest
of a number of the attendees. Later that year, in response to the interest generated from the IIW
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