Advanced structural health monitoring of concrete structures with the aid of acoustic emission

•The latest developments in the field of structural health monitoring by means of AE.•The latest available evaluation parameters to assess the severity and type of damages by means of AE.•The most suitable practical methods to monitor concrete structure in different types of damages by means of AE.•Introducing available quantitative and qualitative AE methods to monitor concrete structures.•Introducing the current limits of acoustic application and novel on-going researches to come up with practical solutions.

This article gives a comprehensive review of the acoustic emission (AE) technique for its applications in concrete structure health monitoring. Basic and established condition assessment methods for concrete structures are reviewed to configure a firm perception of AE application for enhanced performance and reliability. The AE approaches of focus are the parametric and signal analysis which can be used to develop damage evaluation criteria. Other than recent localization and source discrimination methods, applications of pivotal AE parameters such as b-value, Ib-value, AE energy, and hit are discussed herein, with highlights on the limitation of the individual parameter-based approaches when adopted on site. In addition, the introduction of new parameters such as sifted b-value, minimum b-value, and Q value is discussed as well, followed by a novel recent strategy for AE application in conjunction with tomography method to facilitate infrastructure assessment. Moreover, the key role of application of artificial intelligence methods towards damage mode identification has been highlighted.