Abstract
Pipe structures are widely applied in industries, and different kinds of defects may occur in the structures during their long-time service. For non-destructive testing of defects in pipes of small diameter, it has to be conducted from the inner side of the pipe when there is no space for detection from the outside or the geometry of the outside tube surface is too complicated. In this work, a flexible film type Electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) probe with a dual coil configuration is developed. The new probe is flexible and can be inserted into the pipe for inspection. First, the feasibility of the new probe was studied through numerical simulation. Then the feasibility of the proposed flexible EMAT for detection of wall thinning in small diameter pipe was verified experimentally. It was found that the new EMAT method is suitable for the detection of wall thinning defects for small pipes.
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Cuixiang Pei is the Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Mechanics, Xi’an Jiaotong University. He received his Ph.D. degree from The University of Tokyo. His research interests are in the areas of development and application of new NDT methods with using EMAT, laser ultrasonic testing and laser thermography.
Pan Xiao works in Institute of Chemical Material, China Academy of Engineering Physics. She received her M.S. degree from Xi’an Jiaotong University. Her research interests are in the simulation and experiments of EMAT and AE.
Siqi Zhao was born in 1993 in Jilin. She received her B.S. degree from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China in 2015. Her current research interest includes the simulation and experiments of EMAT.
Zhenmao Chen is the Professor in the Department of Engineering Mechanics, Xi’an Jiaotong University. He received his Ph.D. degree from The University of Tokyo. His research interests are in the areas of strength and vibration problems due to electromagnetic force, theory and application of electromagnetic NDT and inverse problems in NDT.
Takagi Toshiyuki is the Professor in the Department of Robotics, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University. His research interests are in the areas of nondestructive material evaluation using electromagnetic phenomena, processing and evaluation of functional materials and functional evaluation of diamond and DLC and their application.
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Pei, C., Xiao, P., Zhao, S. et al. A flexible film type EMAT for inspection of small diameter pipe. J Mech Sci Technol 31, 3641–3645 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-017-0701-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-017-0701-4