Fibre-reinforced composite laminates have been widely applied to many kinds of structures because of their superior properties. The delamination resistance of such composites is a weak point, however, and one of the most important problems is the non-destructive detection of delamination cracks. bn high-resolving-power observations with developed scanning acoustic microscope (SAM) have been conducted for a study of the applicability of the technique for non-destructive inspection of delamination. The high-resolving-power observations were applied to carbon-fibre/epoxy and carbon-fibre/PEEK unidirectional, multidirectional reinforced and fabric composites. From the results obtained, the delamination micro-mechanisms are discussed and knowledge of non-destructive inspection with a SAM has been obtained.