Abstract
Pulsed Eddy Current (PEC) sensing is used for Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) of the structural integrity of metallic structures in the aircraft, railway, oil and gas sectors. Urban water utilities also have extensive large ferromagnetic structures in the form of critical pressure pipe systems made of grey cast iron, ductile cast iron and mild steel. The associated material properties render NDE of these pipes by means of electromagnetic sensing a necessity. In recent years PEC sensing has established itself as a state-of-the-art NDE technique in the critical water pipe sector. This paper presents advancements to PEC inspection in view of the specific information demanded from water utilities along with the challenges encountered in this sector. Operating principles of the sensor architecture suitable for application on critical pipes are presented with the associated sensor design and calibration strategy. A Gaussian process-based approach is applied to model a functional relationship between a PEC signal feature and critical pipe wall thickness. A case study demonstrates the sensor’s behaviour on a grey cast iron pipe and discusses the implications of the observed results and challenges relating to this application.
Highlights
Pulsed Eddy Current (PEC) sensing is considered as the most versatile member of the family of Eddy Current (EC) Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques
Experimental work done on grey cast iron to evaluate the designed sensor’s performance along with observed results are presented in the following subsections
The expected straight line behaviour in the later stage of the signals is evident from the figure, as were the gradients, which translate to β in that region; experimentally validating that signals from the designed sensor were sensitive to grey cast iron thickness up to 20 mm
Summary
Pulsed Eddy Current (PEC) sensing is considered as the most versatile member of the family of Eddy Current (EC) Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques. The work in [19] introduces a novel sensor design integrated with a distributed EC inspection system, while [20] presents a study of applying pulsed remote field eddy currents for internal inspection of pipes Those techniques focus on defect detection and have produced promising results. Deriving from the work of [2,3,4,5], this paper exploits the exciter-detector coil-based PEC sensor architecture to inspect critical pipes by estimating remaining wall thickness using a time domain signal decay rate-based feature. PEC sensing applied to critical pipe assessment It studies the electrical and magnetic properties of a critical pipe material, and based on the quantification of these properties it proposes the sensor design, sensor excitation, signal acquisition and calibration strategies suitable for such materials. PEC sensing for state-of-the-art condition assessment of critical pipes
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