In this study, various damage modes in bending unimorph piezoelectric composite actuators with a thin sandwiched PZT plate during bending fracture tests have been evaluated by monitoring acoustic emission (AE) signals in terms of waveform and peak frequency as well as AE parameters. Three kinds of actuator specimens consisting of woven fabric fiber skin layers and a PZT ceramic core layer are loaded with a roller and an AE activity from the specimen is monitored during the entire loading using an AE transducer mounted on the specimen. AE characteristics from a monolithic PZT ceramic with a thickness of $250{mu}m$ are examined first in order to distinguish different AE signals from various possible damage modes in piezoelectric composite actuators. Post-failure observations and stress analyses in the respective layers of the specimens are conducted to identify particular features in the acoustic emission signal that correspond to specific types of damage modes. As a result, the signal classification based on waveform and peak frequency analyses successfully describes the failure process of the bending piezoelectric composite actuator exhibiting diverse failure mechanisms. Furthermore, it is elucidated that when the PZT ceramic embedded actuators are loaded mechanical bending loads, the failure process of actuator specimens with different lay-up configurations is almost same irrespective of their lay-up configurations.