Enhancement of the Excitation Efficiency of a Torsional Wave PPM EMAT Array for Pipe Inspection by Optimizing the Element Number of the Array Based on 3-D FEM

Electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) can generate non-dispersive T(0,1) mode guided waves in a metallic pipe for nondestructive testing (NDT) by using a periodic permanent magnet (PPM) EMAT circular array. In order to enhance the excitation efficiency of the sensor, the effects of varying the number of elements of the array on the excitation efficiency is studied in this paper. The transduction process of the PPM EMAT array is studied based on 3-D finite element method (FEM). The passing signal amplitude of the torsional wave is obtained to represent the excitation efficiency of the sensor. Models with different numbers of elements are established and the results are compared to obtain an optimal element number. The simulation result is verified by experiments. It is shown that after optimization, the amplitudes of both the passing signal and defect signal with the optimal element number are increased by 29%, which verifies the feasibility of this optimal method. The essence of the optimization is to find the best match between the static magnetic field and the eddy current field in a limited circumferential space to obtain the maximum circumferential Lorentz force.