Investigation of GMR Eddy Current Permanent Magnet System for Carbon Steel Corrosion Identification using IoT Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Drone Platform

Abstract

Eddy current test (ECT) is one of the techniques for accurate testing as well as widely used in the aircraft and nuclear industry. Changes in thickness due to corrosion will affect the measurement of defects on pipes or plates. This will make an irrelevant decision as to whether the defect that occurs on the work piece is the thickness of the paint or corrosion. This problem can lead to the occurrence of leaking pipes, apart from the deterioration of the company’s productivity and most importantly endangering the safety of employees. Meanwhile, eddy current testing is one of the methods in NDT used to detect cracks or corrosion on the surface of carbon steel. In this work, GMR Eddy Current sensor is used to measure the corrosion on carbon steel pipes, and a permanent magnet is used to generate the magnetic field for corrosion detection. Also, this system is configured with an IoT Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) drone platform to facilitate access at different heights during the inspection process. The change of voltage amplitude at the GMR sensor on the test material proves the conditioning of the material either normal or corrosive. The result shows that when corrosion occurs on the pipe, the voltage amplitude increases up to 0.5% higher than normal. Finally, the metal loss is higher when the corrosion area is larger and at the same time it is directly proportional to the voltage amplitude