The present work is focused on detecting and monitoring damage such as loss of thickness due to corrosion or other planar defects in flat metallic panels. The proposed method employs fiber optic sensors that, due to their high multiplexing capability, are capable of mapping the strain fields in the panel surfaces produced by the same, controlled, loading, which are then continuously compared to a reference map obtained with the structure free of defects or with a previously detected damage. Changes in the strain gradient are attributed to the appearance or growth of structural damage. The proposed approach for structural health monitoring has been preliminarily evaluated in this dissertation by analyzing the strain fields produced on an aluminum plate under in plane tensile loads. Artificial, localized surface defects, simulating a loss of thickness due to corrosion where the investigated defects. A mesh of fiber Bragg grating sensors was installed on one of the panel surfaces measuring its principal strains. The strain fields obtained with the plate containing defects with different depths and sizes were compared to a reference measurement with the panel without defects. Experimental data was compared with numerical simulations based on the Finite Element method. The correlation between numerical and experimental results was satisfactory indicating that the method can be further developed in order to be applied in implementations of structural health monitoring systems.