One pick-up coil with a large inner diameter is usually used in pulsed remote field eddy current technique, which decreases the identification ability to defect. With the purpose of overcoming this problem, array pulsed remote field eddy current technique is proposed to enhance the precision in quantification of defect. The finite element method is used to optimise the structure of probe and analyse of the influence effect of response signal with the variation of the defect depths. The results of experimental work confirm that the array pulsed remote field technique has the advantages of high precision and sensitivity, which can be used as an effective method for quantification of defect in tube.

Pulsed eddy current (PEC) nondestructive testing (NDT), as for most of EC techniques, is prone to lift-off effect, which influences the interpretation and quantification of flaw. A new technique for reducing the lift-off effect and quantifying flaw based on sensor design and frequency spectrum analysis is proposed. The technique exploits the self-differential feature of the sensor and the broadband frequency spectral content of pulsed excitation. Results show that the lift-off has been significantly reduced and the precision of quantification of flaw has been improved.

The direction of arrival (DOA) tracking problem based on an angle sensor is an important topic in many fields. In this paper, a nonlinear filter named the feedback M-estimation based robust cubature Kalman filter (FMR-CKF) is proposed to deal with measurement outliers from the angle sensor. The filter designs a new equivalent weight function with the Mahalanobis distance to combine the cubature Kalman filter (CKF) with the M-estimation method. Moreover, by embedding a feedback strategy which consists of a splitting and merging procedure, the proper sub-filter (the standard CKF or the robust CKF) can be chosen in each time index. Hence, the probability of the outliers’ misjudgment can be reduced. Numerical experiments show that the FMR-CKF performs better than the CKF and conventional robust filters in terms of accuracy and robustness with good computational efficiency. Additionally, the filter can be extended to the nonlinear applications using other types of sensors.

Non-magnetic metal plates are widely used in aviation and industrial applications. The detection of cracks in thick plate structures, such as multilayered structures of aircraft fuselage, has been challenging in nondestructive evaluation societies. The remote field eddy current (RFEC) technique has shown advantages of deep penetration and high sensitivity to deeply buried anomalies. However, the RFEC technique is mainly used to evaluate ferromagnetic tubes. There are many problems that should be fixed before the expansion and application of this technique for the inspection of non-magnetic conductive plates. In this article, the pulsed remote field eddy current (PRFEC) technique for the detection of defects in non-magnetic conducting plates was investigated. First, the principle of the PRFEC technique was analysed, followed by the analysis of the differences between the detection of defects in ferromagnetic and non-magnetic plain structures. Three different models of the PRFEC probe were simulated using ANSYS. The location of the transition zone, defect detection sensitivity and the ability to detect defects in thick plates using three probes were analysed and compared. The simulation results showed that the probe with a ferrite core had the highest detecting ability. The conclusions derived from the simulation study were also validated by conducting experiments.

The fatigue crack is the threat to integrity and safety of fuselage lap-joints. Quantification of fatigue cracks by designing and utilisation of an optimised electromagnetic nondestructive evaluation probe can insure the flight safety of aircrafts. In this paper, pulsed eddy current (PEC) for detection and characterisation of fatigue cracks is investigated. The principle of PEC is analysed first, from which four different models of PEC probes are simulated in ANSYS. The signal features, namely zero-crossing time, zero-crossing frequency and peak value are extracted from the time and frequency domains in an effort to qualitatively compare the crack detectability of the four models. The sensitivities of the different probes to cracks are analysed quantitatively. The difference in detectability among the probes is investigated based on the working principle. Simulation results show that the probe consisting of two horizontal detecting coils along with a magnetic field shield focusing the flux has the highest detectability. The conclusions derived from the simulation study are also validated by experiments.

As one of the nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques, pulsed eddy current (PEC) NDT usually uses the reflection-type probe, which consists of a pancake exciting coil for generation of the incident magnetic field and a pick-up coil or a solid-state magnetic field sensor for detecting the perturbed magnetic field due to the presence of defects in conductors. Normally, during the signal processing, the difference process is needed, which involves the subtraction of reference signals from the testing transient signals to enhance the sensitivity of detection. In this paper, a new PEC probe is proposed for the quantification of cracks. The probe has the self-differential characteristic, and thus the difference process is no longer required. The principle of the new probe is analysed firstly. Following that, the performance of the new probe is compared with that of a traditional PEC probe by simulations and experiments. The results show that the proposed PEC probe is valid and advantageous over conventional probes in terms of higher accuracy in quantification of defects.