Pulse-Modulation Eddy Current Imaging for 3D Profile Reconstruction of Subsurface Corrosion in Metallic Structures of Aviation

Abstract

Metallic structures of non-ferromagnetic materials such as aluminum alloy, titanium alloy, etc., are widely used in the engineering field of aviation. Owing to harsh and hostile environments, subsurface corrosion manifests itself in the in-service Metallic Structures of Aviation (MSA), and is usually hidden within the structure body, leaving it barely detected. Such defect has been found to be one of the most critical defects posing a severe threat to structural integrity and safety of MSA. Therefore, it is imperative to conduct imaging and quantitative assessment of the subsurface corrosion with effective Non-destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques. Pulse-modulation Eddy Current technique (PMEC) has been identified to be superior to other electromagnetic NDE techniques in evaluation of corrosion in conductors. In light of this, in this paper PMEC for imaging and 3D profile reconstruction of subsurface corrosion in MSA is investigated. Novel features extracted from testing signals are proposed in a bid to enhance the sensitivity of the PMEC response. An image processing technique based on the modified Theta Map is proposed and utilized for recognition of corrosion opening profile. An efficient inversion method, which is focused on the corrosion-profile reconstruction right within the corrosion region and based on a sectional scanning strategy, is investigated along with the establishment of the database conceiving PMEC responses to regular-shaped corrosion. It has been found from the experimental results that the proposed inversion scheme is feasible and applicable for 3D profiling of subsurface corrosion in MSA with the averaged evaluation accuracy of 95.4%.