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Development of EMA transducer for inspection of pipelines

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Abstract

Electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) have potential for In-line inspection (ILI) of pipelines compare to other Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) methods, since EMAT doesn’t need to contact and/or coupling material and can detect defects in outside of pipelines. However, improvement of transduction efficiency of EMATs is needed to secure integrity of the pipelines. To improve performance of EMAT, optimization of major parameters, such as strength of permanent magnet, shape of coil, configuration of static and dynamic magnetic fields is required. Thus, in this paper, investigation of transduction efficiency with variation of major parameters are performed by comparison of generated ultrasonic signals. Based on the investigation results, EMATs for ILI of pipelines are designed and fabricated with optimized Periodic solenoid array (PSA) types of meander-line sensor, static magnetic field, and then, performance of the developed EMATs are evaluated by detecting defects in the gas pipelines mounted in the one-bed testing system.

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Correspondence to Hak-joon Kim.

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Recommended by Associate Editor Eung-Soo Shin

J. H. Park, born in 1981, is currently a Researcher in Korea research Institute of Standards and Science, Korea. His research interests mainly include nondestructive evaluation of materials based on electromagnetic ultrasound: Physical properties, characterization of materials, and anomaly detection of mechanical structures.

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Park, JH., Kim, DK., Kim, Hj. et al. Development of EMA transducer for inspection of pipelines. J Mech Sci Technol 31, 5209–5218 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-017-1014-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-017-1014-3

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