Eddy Current Pulsed Thermography with Different Excitation Configurations for Metallic Material and Defect Characterization

Gui Yun Tian; Yunlai Gao; Kongjing Li; Yizhe Wang; Bin Gao; Yunze He

doi:10.3390/s16060843

Eddy Current Pulsed Thermography with Different Excitation Configurations for Metallic Material and Defect Characterization

Sensors (Basel). 2016 Jun 8;16(6):843. doi: 10.3390/s16060843.

Authors

Gui Yun Tian^{1

2}, Yunlai Gao^{3

4}, Kongjing Li⁵, Yizhe Wang⁶, Bin Gao⁷, Yunze He^{8

9}

Affiliations

¹ School of Automation Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China. g.y.tian@uestc.edu.cn.
² School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK. g.y.tian@uestc.edu.cn.
³ School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK. Y.Gao28@newcastle.ac.uk.
⁴ College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211106, China. Y.Gao28@newcastle.ac.uk.
⁵ School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK. k.li3@newcastle.ac.uk.
⁶ School of Automation Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China. wangyizhe617525@163.com.
⁷ School of Automation Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China. bin_gao@uestc.edu.cn.
⁸ School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK. hijacker@163.com.
⁹ College of Electrical and Information Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China. hijacker@163.com.

Abstract

This paper reviews recent developments of eddy current pulsed thermography (ECPT) for material characterization and nondestructive evaluation (NDE). Due to the fact that line-coil-based ECPT, with the limitation of non-uniform heating and a restricted view, is not suitable for complex geometry structures evaluation, Helmholtz coils and ferrite-yoke-based excitation configurations of ECPT are proposed and compared. Simulations and experiments of new ECPT configurations considering the multi-physical-phenomenon of hysteresis losses, stray losses, and eddy current heating in conjunction with uniform induction magnetic field have been conducted and implemented for ferromagnetic and non-ferromagnetic materials. These configurations of ECPT for metallic material and defect characterization are discussed and compared with conventional line-coil configuration. The results indicate that the proposed ECPT excitation configurations can be applied for different shapes of samples such as turbine blade edges and rail tracks.

Keywords: eddy current pulsed thermography (ECPT); excitation configuration; material characterization; multi-physical phenomenon; nondestructive evaluation (NDE).