Clustering Characterization of Acoustic Emission Signals Belonging to Twinning and Dislocation Slip during Plastic Deformation of Polycrystalline Sn

Results of acoustic emission (AE) measurements, carried out during plastic deformation of polycrystalline Sn samples, are analyzed by the adaptive sequential k-means method. The acoustic avalanches, originating from different sources, are separated on the basis of their spectral properties, that is, sorted into clusters, presented both on the so-called feature space (energy-median frequency plot) and on the power spectral density (PSD) curves. We found that one cluster in every measurement belongs to background vibrations, while the remaining ones are clearly attributed to twinning as well as dislocation slips at −30 °C and 25 °C, respectively. Interestingly, fingerprints of the well-known “ringing” of AE signals are present in different weights on the PSD curves. The energy and size distributions of the avalanches, corresponding to twinning and dislocation slips, show a bit different power-law exponents from those obtained earlier by fitting all AE signals without cluster separation. The maximum-likelihood estimation of the avalanche energy ([Formula: see text]) and size ([Formula: see text]) exponents provide [Formula: see text] (at −30 °C) and [Formula: see text] (at 25 °C), as well as [Formula: see text] (at −30 °C) and [Formula: see text] (at 25 °C). The clustering analysis provides not only a manner to eliminate the background noise, but the characteristic avalanche shapes are also different for the two mechanisms, as it is visible on the PSD curves. Thus, we have illustrated that this clustering analysis is very useful in discriminating between different AE sources and can provide more realistic estimates, for example, for the characteristic exponents as compared to the classical hit-based approach where the exponents reflect an average value, containing hits from the low-frequency mechanical vibrations of the test machine, too.