Abstract：The technique of acoustic emission is an important approach to reveal the micro-mechanism of deformation and failure of rocks，which is significant in study on mechanism and precursor of instability of rocks，and the location of acoustic emission events is the basis for its analysis. In non-integral and non-homogeneous rocks，the wave velocity field and its change with time are rather complex，and it is difficult to locate accurately acoustic emission events using traditional and absolute locating method. Therefore，the relative locating method is introduced into the location of acoustic emission，which is less dependent on the wave velocity field. The relative locating method is broadly used in locating of earthquakes now，and it is more effective in locating earthquakes with clustering characteristics such as swarms and aftershocks. Aacoustic emissions during deformation of rocks are of similar characteristics. The basic principle of the relative locating method is to select an event from the recording data with high quality as the master earthquake and to locate accurately its position using traditional method，then to locate positions of other events relative to the master event based on their differences in arriving time relative to the master event，and further to locate the real positions of all events. By using the relative locating method，the acoustic emission events are located during the deformation of some non-integral and non-homogeneous rock samples. The results show that the relative locating method can be used to locate acoustic emission events in complex samples，and its reliability and accuracy are obviously improved compared with the traditional method.
