On-Board Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Fiberglass Boom Aerial lift Trucks

A new technique of assuring the integrity of fiberglass booms on aerial lift trucks is presented in this paper. The state of the art approach of acoustic emission periodic proof testing is questioned with a new approach of on-board monitoring. The necessity of moving to on-board monitoring is not only economical, but required through results from research into the relationship between load, time, and residual strengths of the fiberglass boom structure.

The research described in this paper is a comprehensive study into the phenomena of boom failures. The critical event degrading the integrity of the boom was found to be damage loads. The paper defines damage loads and discusses the necessity to have the ability to detect and alarm the damage load condition.