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

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.