ACOUSTIC EMISSION DETECTION, CHARACTERIZATION, AND MONITORING OF STEEL BRIDGE MEMBERS

This paper describes an acoustic emission (AE) monitoring technique to identify active fatigue cracks in steel bridge members. The current approach for AE field monitoring was modified, using guard sensors, electronic filtering, and post-monitoring analysis, to obtain and evaluate AE data in the time and frequency domains. A data base of AE characteristics of various structural components during field applications was developed to improve the reliability of the AE technique.