ABSTRACT
Acoustic emission (AE) can be ideally used to identify the underlying damage mechanisms of a structure under loading. The characteristics of the AE activity depend on the strain energy, which is released during a particular mechanism and the latter depends on the different stiffness, strength and toughness characteristics of the constituents (matrix, fibers and interphase between fibers and matrix), so that the different mechanisms are expected to generate distinct AE signals. The challenge is to be able to correlate the received signals with the corresponding mechanisms.
