Metal sorting is the first step in scrap metal recycling. The traditional magnetic separation method can classify ferromagnetic metals, but it is not applicable to some nonmagnetic metals with higher value. To address this situation, we propose an eddy current testing (ECT) technology-based method for classifying nonmagnetic metals. In this study, a triple-coil electromagnetic sensor, which works as two coil pairs, is tested. By analyzing the physical model of the sensor, a feature related to the conductivity of the sample under test is obtained as the difference in the tangent of the impedance changes in the two coil pairs. Additionally, we derive a linear relationship between this feature and the lift-off height, which is verified experimentally and will help to solve the classification error caused by the variation in the lift-off height. In addition, we find that the excitation frequency does not affect this linear feature. Moreover, in this study, the spectrum scanning method is converted into a single-frequency measurement, and the time consumption is greatly reduced, which improves the efficiency of the real-time metal classification system.
Keywords: eddy current testing; lift-off; metal classification; phase tangent; triple-coil sensor.