Assessment of damage distribution in brittle materials by application of an improved algorithm for three-dimensional localization of acoustic emission sources with P-wave velocity calculation

•An improved algorithm is applied for localization of AE sources with vp calculation.•CLAPWaVe algorithm is applied to assess the damage distribution in rock specimens.•vp values distribution provide information related to evolution of damage in rocks.•A non-homogeneous distribution of damage inside the rock specimens was observed.•Using a unique value for vp for localization may lead to unrealistic analyses. An improved algorithm for acoustic emission source localization with P-wave velocity vp calculation and an enhanced methodology for P-wave onset time determination, called CLAPWaVe [1], is applied to analyze the distribution of damage within rock specimens under diametral compression. The analyses allowed the identification of four zones of damage accumulation within the specimen volume, each of them with different cracking levels, absolute energy release and associated vp values. The observed non-homogeneous damage distribution confirms that using a unique vp value for the localization of all AE sources, as usually adopted, is not representative of the real condition of the specimen.