Wireless Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Structural Behavior

The few non-visual methodologies make use of wired devices. Systems based on wireless transmission should be cost efficient and adaptive to different structures. The Acoustic Emission (AE) technique is an innovative monitoring method useful to detect damage, as well as to evaluate the evolution and the location 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 steel, 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 steel structures monitored during fatigue loading condition. 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.