Development of eddy current testing probe for thick-walled metal plate and quantitative evaluation of cracks

This paper demonstrates the crack detection of thick-walled non-magnetic metal plates by eddy current testing, which is difficult because of Kelvin skin effect generally. The purpose of this research is the development of an new eddy current testing probe for cracks in thick-walled plates and crack shapes quantitative evaluation. The probe was designed, based on the numerical computation using 3D fast eddy current code. The advantages of this new probe are strong eddy current on the back of specimens and gentle decrement of eddy current in the thickness direction. Through experiments, we confirmed that this probe can detect the back artificial defect with 0.5 mm thickness on IN-CONEL 718 specimen with 7.0 mm thickness. Reconstruction of crack shapes was performed based on the experimental results with the inverse problem code developed by authors. The length and depth of reconstructed defects approximately agree with those of real crack. (author)