Recent Advances on Pipe Inspection using Guided Waves Generated by Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducers

摘要

For several years guided waves have been used for pipe wall defect detection. Guided waves have become popular for monitoring large structures because of the capability of these waves to propagate long distances along pipes, plates, interfaces and structural boundaries before loosing their strengths. The current technological challenges are to detect small defects in the pipe wall and estimate their dimensions using appropriate guided wave modes and to generate those modes relatively easily for field applications. Electro-Magnetic Acoustic Transducers (EMAT) can generate guided waves in pipes in the field environment. This paper shows how small defects in the pipe wall can be detected and their dimensions can be estimated by appropriate signal processing technique applied to the signals generated and received by the EMAT.