Acoustic Emission (AE) techniques have been studied in civil engineering for a long time. The techniques are recently going to be more and more applied to practical applications and to be standardized in the codes. This is because the increase of aging structures and disastrous damages due to recent earthquakes urgently demand for maintenance and retrofit of civil structures in service for example. It results in the need for the development of advanced and effective inspection techniques. Thus, AE techniques draw a great attention to diagnostic applications and in material testing. The book covers all levels from the description of AE basics for AE beginners (level of a student) to sophisticated AE algorithms and applications to real large-scale structures as well as the observation of the cracking process in laboratory specimen to study fracture processes.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Christian U. Grosse, born 1961, studied Geophysics at the University of Karlsruhe (TH) and earned his Ph.D. in 1996 in Civil Engineering at the University of Stuttgart followed by his Habilitation in 2005 at the same place. He is University lecturer at the University of Stuttgart and head of the Department of "Non-destructive testing and monitoring techniques" at the Material Testing Institute MPA, University of Stuttgart. In 2007 he became Associate Director of the MPA. His research interest include the application and development of non-destructive testing methods (ultrasound, acoustic emission, impact-echo, vibration analysis, Radar) as well as structural health monitoring using wireless sensor networks.

Dr. Masayasu Ohtsu is a professor at the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kumamoto University, Japan. Currently, he is a chairman of Technical Committee TC212-ACD in RILEM and a regional editor of the journal Construction and Building Materials for Elsevier. He graduated from Kyoto University, Japan in 1974, and received his Dr. Eng. in 1982. He is also an associate member of Committee 228 on non-destructive testing of concrete in ACI and has been studying the applications of AE techniques to concrete engineering for more than 20 years.