Acoustic emission technology provides many unique capabilities for inspection and diagnostics of metal and composite structures. Particularly, it allows early detection of damage accumulation, identification and assessment of failure mechanisms, identification of loading conditions contributing to flaw-development and many other. In recent decades, several international standards including ASTM and EN have been developed to provide standardized approach for examination of composite structures. Nevertheless, many aspects related to damage identification, flaw assessment and failure prediction by means of AE testing were not addressed in these documents. In this work, we provide a generalized approach for structural health monitoring of aerospace structures by means of acoustic emission technology. This approach was recently adopted as an international standard ASTM E2983-14 Standard Guide for Application of Acoustic Emission for Structural Health Monitoring and also demonstrate practical applications on the proposed approach in several aerospace applications including inspection and monitoring of structures and pressure equipment.
