Acoustic emission wireless monitoring of structures and infrastructure

The damage assessment of buildings is currently made visually. The few non-visual methodologies make use of wired devices, which are expensive, vulnerable, and time consuming to install. Systems based on wireless transmission should be cost efficient, easy to install, and adaptive to different types of structures and infrastructures. The Acoustic Emission (AE) technique is an innovative monitoring method useful to investigate the damage in large structures. It has the potential to detect damage, as well as to evaluate the evolution and the position of cracks. This paper shows the capability of a new data processing system based on a wireless AE equipment, very useful to long term monitoring of concrete and masonry structures. To this purpose, computer-based procedures, including an improved AE source location based on the Akaike algorithm, are implemented. These procedures are performed by automatic AE data processing and are used to evaluate the AE results in notched concrete beams subjected to three point bending loading conditions up to the final failure. In this case, the final output of the code returns a complete description of damage pattern and evolution of the monitored structure. In the most critical cases, or in some cases requiring long in situ observation periods, the AE monitoring method is fine tuned for a telematic procedure of processing AE data clouds to increase the safety of structures and infrastructural networks. Finally, the proposed AE monitoring system could be used to determine the seismic risk of civil constructions and monuments subjected to earthquakes.