Real Time Fatigue Crack Growth Monitoring Using High Precision Control and Data Acquisition Systems

Abstract: Fatigue cracks may initiate and propagate long before a structural component reaches the end of its nominal life. Detecting and quantifying crack growth in real time is critical for avoiding catastrophic failures in aerospace structures, nuclear reactors and civil infrastructure. This research reviews four widely used crack growth monitoring techniques: digital image correlation (DIC), acoustic emission (AE), compliance based methods and direct current potential drop (DCPD). The research evaluates their working principles, instrumentation, detection thresholds, noise sensitivities and suitability under various environmental conditions. Recent advances in high precision control and data acquisition systems (DAQs) that enable multi sensor data fusion are explored. The goal is to guide selection and integration of monitoring methods in modern structural health monitoring architectures.