## 4 Summary, Conclusions, and Future Scopes  
As a final comment, the preliminary results from the case study on the tensile and fatigue behaviour using the _fcc_ Inconel-625 alloy as an example contain a wealth of information regarding underlying deformation and fracture mechanisms. This multifaceted information was enabled due to the integration of several in situ monitoring techniques--infrared thermography, multi-resolution rapid video imaging complemented by the digital image correlation capability, and acoustic emission powered by the spectral analysis and statistical clustering algorithms--into a common framework, addressing multiple hardware and software challenges, which are inevitable in a contemporary advanced experimental design. At variance to the commercially available systems pairing the DIC and IRT techniques (e.g., [[https://www.infract.eu/thermography/digital-image-correlation-and-thermographic-measurements/](https://www.infract.eu/thermography/digital-image-correlation-and-thermographic-measurements/)]([https://www.infract.eu/thermography/digital-image-correlation-and-thermographic-measurements/](https://www.infract.eu/thermography/digital-image-correlation-and-thermographic-measurements/)) (accessed on 14 July 2021)), the use of the open-source software architecture offers uncompromised versatility with a balance of efficiency, accuracy, and tunability of the entire system. Not only the proposed system can be adapted to virtually any combination of thermal and visual cameras, and to suit a wide range of load-bearing applications, but also the concurrent use of AE measurements, which are fully synchronised with the two other techniques and the loading device, adds a new dimension to the multiscale research in the field of physics and mechanics of plasticity and fracture. Figure 19: Characterisation of fatigue crack propagation by a combination of IRT, DIC/RVI, and AE techniques. The vertical line indicates the LEFM SSY limit according to Equation (24). Figure 20: AE power plotted as a function of the stress intensity factor range. The vertical line indicates the LEFM SSY limit according to Equation (24). Admittedly, the presented results show only the tip of the iceberg and leave more questions than answers. Specifically, there is still a great deal of opportunity to improve virtually all metrological aspects and traceability of the results of measurements by the techniques employed. However, we believe that the proposed rigorous methodology documented in significant details in the present communication permits answering many open questions related to damage initiation and propagation in solids under monotonic and cyclic loads. This is the scope of the ongoing research, the results of which will be reported elsewhere. We also believe that the proposed instrumented laboratory experimental platform can serve for future developments of novel practical approaches and means for non-destructive health monitoring of industrial facilities and infrastructure. Conceptualisation, A.S. and A.V. ; methodology, A.S. and A.O.M. ; software, A.S.; validation, A.S.; investigation, A.S., A.O.M. and S.W.W. ; writing--original draft preparation, A.S., A.O.M. and S.W.W. ; writing--review and editing, A.V., A.S. and A.O.M. ; visualisation, A.S.; supervision, A.V. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This work was partially supported by Research Council of Norway, Project No. 294739, Safe Pipelines for Hydrogen Transport (HyLINE). Not applicable. Data Availability Statement: Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The authors gratefully acknowledge to [PERSON] and SINTEF Industry personnel for their kind help with specimens preparation. Special thanks go to [PERSON] and [PERSON] for encouragement, support, and discussions. We also thank [PERSON] for providing the material for this study. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the insightful comments that helped in improving the manuscript.