Measurement of permeability for ferrous metallic plates using a novel lift-off compensation technique on phase signature

Lift-off of sensor affects the prediction of electromagnetic properties for both ferrous and non-ferrous steel plates. In this paper, we developed a strategy to address this issue for ferrous plates. With increased lift-off, the phase of the measured impedance for steel plates reduces. Meanwhile, the magnitude of the impedance signal decreases. Based on these facts, a phase compensation algorithm is developed which corrects the phase change due to lift-off considering the magnitude of the impedance signal. Further, a new magnetic permeability prediction technique is presented, which has been validated by analytical and measured results. With this new technique, the error in permeability prediction is less than 2% within the range of lift-offs tested

An equivalent-effect phenomenon in eddy current non-destructive testing of thin structures

The inductance/impedance due to thin metallic structures in non-destructive testing (NDT) is difficult to evaluate. In particular, in Finite Element Method (FEM) eddy current simulation, an extremely fine mesh is required to accurately simulate skin effects especially at high frequencies, and this could cause an extremely large total mesh for the whole problem, i.e. including, for example, other surrounding structures and excitation sources like coils. Consequently, intensive computation requirements are needed. In this paper, an equivalent-effect phenomenon is found, which has revealed that alternative structures can produce the same effect on the sensor response, i.e. mutual impedance/inductance of coupled coils if a relationship (reciprocal relationship) between the electrical conductivity and the thickness of the structure is observed. By using this relationship, the mutual inductance/impedance can be calculated from the equivalent structures with much fewer mesh elements, which can significantly save the computation time. In eddy current NDT, coils inductance/impedance is normally used as a critical parameter for various industrial applications, such as flaw detection, coating and microstructure sensing. Theoretical derivation, measurements and simulations have been presented to verify the feasibility of the proposed phenomenon

Image reconstruction of low conductivity material distribution using magnetic induction tomography

Magnetic induction tomography (MIT) is a non-invasive, soft field imaging modality that has the potential to map the electrical conductivity (σ) distribution inside an object under investigation. In MIT, a number of exciter and receiver coils are distributed around the periphery of the object. A primary magnetic field is emitted by each exciter, and interacts with the object. This induces eddy currents in the object, which in turn create a secondary field. This latter is coupled to the receiver coils and voltages are induced. An image reconstruction algorithm is then used to infer the conductivity map of the object. In this thesis, the application of MIT for volumetric imaging of objects with low conductivity materials (< 5 Sm-1) and dimensions < 1 m is investigated. In particular, two low conductivity applications are approached: imaging cerebral stroke and imaging the saline water in multiphase flows. In low conductivity applications, the measured signals are small and the spatial sensitivity is critically compromised making the associated inverse problem severely non-linear and ill-posed.The main contribution from this study is to investigate three non-linear optimisation techniques for solving the MIT inverse problem. The first two methods, namely regularised Levenberg Marquardt method and trust region Powell's Dog Leg method, employ damping and trust region strategies respectively. The third method is a modification of the Gauss Newton method and utilises a damping regularisation technique. An optimisation in the convergence and stability of the inverse solution was observed with these methods compared to standard Gauss Newton method. For such non linear treatment, re-evaluation of the forward problem is also required. The forward problem is solved numerically using the impedance method and a weakly coupled field approximation is employed to reduce the computation time and memory requirements. For treating the ill-posedness, different regularisation methods are investigated. Results show that the subspace regularisation technique is suitable for absolute imaging of the stroke in a real head model with synthetic data. Tikhonov based smoothing and edge preserving regularisation methods also produced successful results from simulations of oil/water. However, in a practical setup, still large geometrical and positioning noise causes a major problem and only difference imaging was viable to achieve a reasonable reconstruction.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo