Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducers Applied to High Temperature Plates for Potential Use in the Solar Thermal Industry

Concentrated Solar Plants (CSPs) are used in solar thermal industry for collecting and converting sunlight into electricity. Parabolic trough CSPs are the most widely used type of CSP and an absorber tube is an essential part of them. The hostile operating environment of the absorber tubes, such as high temperatures (400–550 °C), contraction/expansion, and vibrations, may lead them to suffer from creep, thermo-mechanical fatigue, and hot corrosion. Hence, their condition monitoring is of crucial importance and a very challenging task as well. Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducers (EMATs) are a promising, non-contact technology of transducers that has the potential to be used for the inspection of large structures at high temperatures by exciting Guided Waves. In this paper, a study regarding the potential use of EMATs in this application and their performance at high temperature is presented. A Periodic Permanent Magnet (PPM) EMAT with a racetrack coil, designed to excite Shear Horizontal waves (SH0), has been theoretically and experimentally evaluated at both room and high temperatures. OPEN ACCESS Appl. Sci. 2015, 5 1716