Accurate and efficient estimation for defect profile of magnetic flux leakage (MFL) signals is important for nondestructive evaluation in industry. To improve the accuracy of defect profile reconstruction, an improved reconstruction method based on modified cuckoo search (CS), called MCS, is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a novel single-dimension updating evolution strategy is proposed to avoid the interference between multiple dimensions, which can make full use of the appropriate nest position in the historical search. Secondly, an adaptive multi-strategy difference evolution is introduced into the evolution process to improve the diversity and efficiency of CS algorithm. The proportion factor of each strategy in multi-strategy difference evolution is adjusted dynamically according to the value of the objective fitness. Finally, various MFL signals are selected to verify the effectiveness of the proposed MCS algorithm. The experiment results illustrate that the proposed method has high performance on the quality of the solution and robustness for noise.
Keywords: MFL signals; cuckoo search; defect profile reconstruction; multi-strategy difference evolution; single-dimension.