Acoustic Emission for Characterization of Leather

To identify the quality of leather In this Phase I SBIR Physical Acoustics Corporation will use Acoustic Emission for the inspection, assessment, and on-line monitoring of leather properties and their quality level at each stage during manufacturing. PAC will demonstrate the ability of the AE inspection technique for assessing leather properties. In particular PAC will concentrate on the evaluation of leather softness using our state of the art modern AE equipment, and methods of data analysis. PAC will perform careful research and analysis on data collected from leather samples, in order to show that it is possible to eliminate destructive testing and improve the manufacturing process. The long-range goal of this proposed work is the production of an AE instrument, which will provide the leather industry with NDE technology to monitor the quality of leather at each of the leather-manufacturing stages. As a result, tanners would be able to adjust their leather-manufacturing processes accordingly to yield higher quality leather.