Evaluation of sensitivity of remote field eddy current testing and low-frequency eddy current testing for inspecting grooves of metal plate

Abstract

We compare remote field eddy current testing and low-frequency eddy current testing from the viewpoint of sensitivity to back-side grooves in a metal plate. We carry out experiments using three metal plates with different depths of artificial grooves. A U-shape magnetic shield gives rise to a remote field eddy current as occurs in pipe inspection. The experiments show that the two methods have almost the same sensitivity to back-side grooves if a relatively low frequency and relatively far coil interval are used, which is also validated by three-dimensional finite-element simulations. We conduct numerical investigations to find the reason for this condition. © 2012 The Japan Institute of Metals.