Pulsed Eddy-Current Inspection of Thin-Walled Stainless Steel Tubing

摘要

A pulsed eddy-current system has been developed for production inspection of small, thin-wall, non-ferromagnetic tubing. To detect and accurately size both outer and bore-side flaws required an operating frequency higher than available from present commercial equipment. A pulsed eddy-current instrument was designed and constructed that used 3.2 MHz square waves, with a bandwidth of 20 MHz. The system is able to reliably detect flaws as small as 0.015 mm (0.6 mils) on either the inner or outer surface of the tube. A computer controls the scanning of the tube, as recording, analyzing, and plotting the data. The computer programs and instrument details are given in the report. (ERA citation 13:001498)