Transmitter-receiver (T-R) probes are widely used in the eddy-current testing of carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP). However, T-R probes have the disadvantage of being highly sensitive to lift-off. On this basis, lift-off interference can be eliminated by differential structure. However, due to the electrical anisotropy of CFRP, the detection sensitivity of the side-by-side T-R probe and traditional R-T-R differential probe are greatly affected by the scanning angle, and the probe often needs to scan the sample along a specific path to achieve the ideal required detection effect. To solve these problems, a symmetrical dual-transmit-dual-receive (TR-TR) differential probe is designed in this paper. The detection performance of the TR-TR probe was verified by simulation and experiments. Results show that the TR-TR probe is less affected by the scanning angle and lift-off when used in CFRP defect detection, and has high detection sensitivity. However, the imaging results of the TR-TR probe do not show the defect characteristics straightforwardly. To solve this problem, a defect feature extraction algorithm is proposed in this paper. The results show that the defect feature extraction algorithm can locate and size the defect more accurately and improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

Eddy current testing (ECT) is commonly used for the detection of defects inside metallic materials. In order to achieve the effective testing of CFRP materials, increasing the operating frequency or improving the coil structure is a common method used by researchers. Higher or wider operating frequencies make the design of the ADC’s conditioning circuit complex and difficult to miniaturize. In this paper, an LC resonator based on inductance-to-digital converters (LDCs) is designed to easily detect the resonant frequency response to the state of the material under test. The reasonableness of the coil design is proven by simulation. The high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and detection sensitivity of the LC resonator are demonstrated through comparison experiments involving multiple probes. The anti-interference capability of the LC resonator in CFRP defect detection is demonstrated through various interference experiments.