Abstract: Aiming at the problem of poor reception of acoustic emission signals near the center position of the tank bottom by traditional acoustic emission source positioning methods, an 8-4-2-1 umbrella-shaped positioning array was designed. By changing the combination of positioning sensors and integrating pattern recognition technology into the new array positioning algorithm, the problems of missed positioning and pseudo positioning that were prone to occur in tank bottom positioning were solved. Finally, the effectiveness of the positioning array was verified through comparative experiments. The experimental results showed that the new positioning algorithm improved the positioning accuracy of the center position of the tank bottom by 10.99%, and the impact of repeated positioning and pseudo positioning problems on the positioning results reduced by 31.22%.