Miniaturised SH EMATs for fast robotic screening of wall thinning in steel plates

Electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) are well suited to generating and detecting a variety of different ultrasonic wavemodes, without the need for couplant, and they can be operated through some coatings. EMATs can be used to generate shear horizontal (SH) waves, which show promise for fast screening of wall thinning and other defects. However, commercial SH-wave EMATs are not suitable for robotic implementation on ferritic steel due to the large magnetic drag force from the magnets. This article describes the design and characterisation of miniaturised SH guided wave EMATs, which significantly reduce the magnetic drag and enable mounting onto a small crawler robot for sample scanning. The performance of the miniaturised EMATs is characterised and compared to a commercial EMAT. It is shown that signal to noise ratio is reduced, but remains within an acceptable range to use on steel. The bandwidth and directivity are increased, depending on the exact design used. Their ability to detect flat bottomed holes mimicking wall thinning is also tested

Thermal damage assessment of metallic plates using a nonlinear electromagnetic acoustic resonance technique

Abstract(#br)Low efficiency of energy transition is generally considered to be the only weakness of electromagnetic ultrasonic transducers (EMATs). Electromagnetic acoustic resonance (EMAR) technique has been successfully used to overcome this disadvantage with a combination of the EMATs with the ultrasonic resonant method. In this paper, a nonlinear EMAR technique has been proposed to evaluate the thermal damage of metallic materials, which combines the feature of EMAR with the merit of higher harmonic generation that provides an effective indicator to material damage. The use of contactless EMATs can isolate the material nonlinearity and maintain the coupling condition consistently on measurements of higher harmonics generated. EMAR provides high enough signal magnitude for higher harmonic generated. An experimental scheme is proposed and applied to assess the thermal damage in aluminum and nickel plates. In addition, conventional EMAR techniques based on the measure of shear wave velocity and attenuation within a certain frequency range, are also carried out for the specimens. The experimental results show a monotonic relationship between the normalized amplitude of higher harmonic generated and the artificial thermal loading time, while no stable trends are observed by conventional linear EMAR approaches. The results in this paper indicate that nonlinear EMAR technique proposed can be used to assess the thermal damage in both nonferromagnetic and ferromagnetic materials, with improved reliability and sensitivity over linear one

Bridges Structural Health Monitoring and Deterioration Detection Synthesis of Knowledge and Technology

INE/AUTC 10.0

Miniaturised SH EMATs for fast robotic screening of wall thinning in steel plates

Electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) are well suited to generating and detecting a variety of different ultrasonic wavemodes, without the need for couplant, and they can be operated through some coatings. EMATs can be used to generate shear horizontal (SH) waves, which show promise for fast screening of wall thinning and other defects. However, commercial SH-wave EMATs are not suitable for robotic implementation on ferritic steel due to the large magnetic drag force from the magnets. This article describes the design and characterisation of miniaturised SH guided wave EMATs, which significantly reduce the magnetic drag and enable mounting onto a small crawler robot for sample scanning. The performance of the miniaturised EMATs is characterised and compared to a commercial EMAT. It is shown that signal to noise ratio is reduced, but remains within an acceptable range to use on steel. The bandwidth and directivity are increased, depending on the exact design used. Their ability to detect flat bottomed holes mimicking wall thinning is also tested