Design of encircling send-receive type pulsed eddy current probe

An encircling send-receive type pulsed eddy current (PEC) probe is designed for use in the tube inspection. When bare receive coils, which are located away from the exciter, are used, the peak time of the signal does not change although the distance from the exciter increases. This is because the magnetic fields from exciter coil arrive directly at the receive coil without passing through the tube. Therefore, in this work, both exciter and sensor coils are shielded to reduce the influence of direct fields from the exciter coil. Numerical simulation with the designed shielded encircling PEC probe shows the corresponding increase of peak time as the sensor distance increases. Ferrite and carbon steel shields are compared and found that the ferrite shielding results in slightly stronger peak value and quicker peak time than the carbon steel shielding. Sensitivity of peak value to defect depth variation is also investigated and found that the normalized peak value is more sensitive when the sensor is located closer to the exciter for aluminum tube. In the case of magnetic tube, however, all the characteristics are opposite to those obtained from nonmagnetic aluminum tube.