Though the Acoustic Emission (AE) technique has been testified to be effective for the Non-Destructive Inspection (NDI) of foundations in past studies, there are still some disadvantages for the current AE technique in application to the integrity evaluation of foundations, such as the needs of large-scale loading and embedding waveguide rods in the ground, which increase the cost and extend the period of inspection. To solve these problems, this paper examines the characteristics of secondary AE based on model and in situ experiments, and proposes a reasonable and economic NDI method for the integrity evaluation of substructures by utilizing the in-service train loading.

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