Study on Effect of Electromagnetic Characteristics of Deformed 304 Stainless Steel on Eddy Current Testing

Abstract

The induced ferrite and other high magnetic microstructures content changes are studied when 304 austenitic stainless steel stripe specimens are tested under different uniaxial tension deformation, namely its deformation less than 50%. Furtherly, the correlation is plotted between the resulting magnetic permeability or coercivity caused by these microstructures and deformation. Meanwhile, the optimal eddy current excitation frequency under different deformation was obtained, which was consistent with 3-D finite element analysis (FEA). Besides, other various factors affecting the quality of eddy current testing (ECT), such as temperature and conductivity, are also considered comprehensively during the tensile test. The results of the experiment and simulation calculation show that when the deformation is within 50% that necking deformation has occurred, the magnetic permeability of specimens increases with deformation, and gradually begin to have the magnetic properties of weak ferromagnetic materials, which also changes the optimal excitation frequency, which varies from 60 kHz to 110 kHz. Because of the electromagnetic response noise increase, the impedance plane diagrams of defects distort simultaneously, which leads to the quantitative evaluation error of defects.