A Novel Method for Distinguishing Discontinuities In Ferromagnetic Materials Based On Eddy Current Testing Under Magnetization

Detecting inner- and outer-surface discontinuities of drill pipe is of great significance to the evaluation of the quality of the drill pipe. This paper proposes a method based on a magnetized eddy current testing technique to detect inner- and outer-surface discontinuities by analyzing the difference of the imaginary part signal characteristics of the receiving coil. For eddy current testing, the outer-surface discontinuities cause the local conductivity to be zero, while inner-surface discontinuities cause the perturbation of the magnetic permeability on the material surface. In this paper, the effects of conductivity distortion and permeability perturbation on induced eddy currents are analyzed by simulation. The conductivity distortion increases the magnetic field above the discontinuity compared to the magnetic field without the discontinuity, while the permeability perturbation reduces the magnetic field. Next, the difference in coil impedance can be used to distinguish the inner- and outer-surface discontinuities. Finally, the feasibility of the method is verified by experiments, and the results show that the inner- and outer-surface discontinuities can be discriminated.