Hall-effect sensors are used to detect metal surface defects both experimentally and numerically. The gap between the specimen and the sensor, called the liftoff, is assumed to remain constant, while a slight misplacement of a sample may lead to incorrect measurements by the Hall-effect sensor. This paper proposes a numerical simulation method to mitigate the liftoff issue. Owing to the complexity of conducting precise finite-element analysis, rather than obtaining the induced current in the Hall sensor, only the magnetic flux leakage is obtained. Thus, to achieve a better approximation, a numerical method capable of obtaining the induced current density in the circumferential direction in terms of the inspection direction is also proposed. Signals of the conventional and proposed approximate numerical methods affected by the sensor liftoff variation were obtained and compared. For small liftoffs, both conventional and proposed numerical methods could identify notch defects, while as the liftoff increased, no defect could be identified using the conventional numerical method. Furthermore, experiments were performed using a variety of liftoff configurations. Based on the results, considering the threshold of the conventional numerical method, defects were detected for greater liftoffs, but misdetection did not occur.
Keywords: Hall sensor; damage detection; experimental analysis; liftoff; magnetic flux leakage; numerical analysis.