Short Review of the Use of Acoustic Emissions for Detection and Monitoring of Cracks

Acoustics Australia (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

Proper detection and monitoring of cracks are crucial when evaluating the health of equipment and structures because of the catastrophic failures that can occur if they evolve without control. Among the group of nondestructive tests (NDT), acoustic emissions (AE) emerge as the most used technique for this purpose. This is due to its high sensitivity to low-energy events, which allows the incipient detection of cracks. In this paper, a short review is presented concerning some practical and research activities on crack detection and monitoring in structures using AE. It is shown that AE is a versatile technique for crack detection and monitoring, with applications in a broad range of materials such as concrete, composites, rocks, metals, and wood and in different types of civil and industrial applications.

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Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio de Vibraciones Mecánicas, Departamento de Ingeniería Mecánica, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile

    Álvaro Carrasco, Franco Méndez & Cristián Molina Vicuña

  2. Institute for Advanced Mining Technologies, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Félix Leaman

Authors
  1. Álvaro Carrasco
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  2. Franco Méndez
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  3. Félix Leaman
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  4. Cristián Molina Vicuña
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Correspondence to Cristián Molina Vicuña.

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Carrasco, Á., Méndez, F., Leaman, F. et al. Short Review of the Use of Acoustic Emissions for Detection and Monitoring of Cracks. Acoust Aust (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40857-021-00219-4

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Keywords

  • Acoustic emission
  • Crack
  • Structure health monitoring