Localization of acoustic emission sources in structural health monitoring of masonry bridge

The application of the Acoustic Emission (AE) technique to monitoring the crack characterization in masonry structures is investigated in this paper. An improved approach, modified from the classical crack source localization method, is proposed to provide more reliable crack locations in masonry structures. The introduced parameter, degree of inhomogeneity ξ in the modified method can help to decrease the unavoidable propagation delay related to refraction due to the layers in masonry material. The modified method is successfully applied to the AE source detection during the pencil-lead break test and the central pier settlement test of a masonry model bridge to analyze the crack pattern. It is shown that the proposed method is a reliable tool for crack source location in masonry structures.