Methods of non-destructive testing play important role in the problem of maintenance of transport and transport infrastructure. They make possible the early detection of internal defects in engineering structures and elements of vehicle construction. Acoustic emission method (AE) is a unique tool that allows carrying out research of construction strength, which cannot be done in other ways. The paper assesses the possibility of separate and common use of the AE intensity and AE spectral characteristic in various types of land transportation applications. The experiments were performed for raw materials, separate engineering objects and for the larger scale structure. On the basis of tests features of the AE which allow more efficient and accurate analysis of the state of objects have been revealed. The “healthily” object AE pattern class determination and usage was described. The relation of the intensity and frequency characteristics of the AE signal for composite tensile test was described. The possibility to use this pair of parameters related to an object's state assessment was studied. The possibility of identification of the stage of the destruction of the composite object on the basis of these parameters was discussed. The software that implements AE pattern recognition approach and suggested quantitative analysis of the dynamics of the parameters of the AE signals was developed and used in experiments.