Development of a wholly flexible surface wave electromagnetic acoustic transducer for pipe inspection

Electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) have been widely applied in nondestructive testings and structural health monitoring. This paper proposes a flexible surface wave electromagnetic acoustic transducer (FSW-EMAT), which uses flexible rubber magnets instead of hard permanent magnets, in orde...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of applied electromagnetics and mechanics Vol. 62; no. 1; pp. 13 - 29
Main Authors Liu, Zenghua, Li, Aili, Wu, Bin, He, Cunfu
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Amsterdam IOS Press BV 01.01.2020
Subjects
Acoustics
Coils
Curvature
Defects
Electromagnets
Ferromagnetism
Flux density
Inspection
Magnetic flux
Magnetism
Nondestructive testing
Permanent magnets
Rubber
Steel pipes
Structural health monitoring
Surface waves
Transducers
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Summary:Electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) have been widely applied in nondestructive testings and structural health monitoring. This paper proposes a flexible surface wave electromagnetic acoustic transducer (FSW-EMAT), which uses flexible rubber magnets instead of hard permanent magnets, in order to achieve the defects detection of steel pipe or other ferromagnetic structures with a certain surface curvature. Traditional EMATs mainly consist of three parts: magnet, coil and metal specimen to be tested. Permanent magnets or electromagnets are generally used to produce the strong magnetic flux density. However, the two kinds of magnets are not suitable for the defect detection of metal specimens with a certain curvature. The proposed FSW-EMAT in this paper adopts a flexible magnet, which is a mixture of rubber and iron powder and has strong flexibility to fit the bent specimen. The proposed FSW-EMAT can be easily applied in the testing of curved structural component and detect axial and circumferential defects by rotating the transducer.
ISSN:1383-5416
1875-8800
DOI:10.3233/JAE-190043