Materials Transactions, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2013) pp.

90 to 95
© 2012 The Japan Institute of Metals

Evaluation of Sensitivity of Remote Field Eddy Current Testing

and Low-Frequency Eddy Current Testing
for Inspecting Grooves of Metal Plate
Jing Wang1,2,+, Noritaka Yusa2, Hongliang Pan1, Toshiyuki Takagi3 and Hidetoshi Hashizume2
1
School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, P. R. China
2
Department of Quantum Science and Energy Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University,
Sendai 980-8579, Japan
3
Institute of Fluid Science, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan

We compare remote field eddy current testing and low-frequency eddy current testing from the viewpoint of sensitivity to back-side
grooves in a metal plate. We carry out experiments using three metal plates with different depths of artificial grooves. A U-shape magnetic shield
gives rise to a remote field eddy current as occurs in pipe inspection. The experiments show that the two methods have almost the same
sensitivity to back-side grooves if a relatively low frequency and relatively far coil interval are used, which is also validated by three-dimensional
finite-element simulations. We conduct numerical investigations to find the reason for this condition. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.M2012323]

(Received September 14, 2012; Accepted November 2, 2012; Published December 14, 2012)
Keywords: electromagnetic nondestructive evaluation, finite element simulation, sensitivity, depth of penetration, eddy currents, metal plate

1. Introduction
Remote field eddy current testing (RFECT) has been
widely used for inspecting pipe abnormity for many years,
because it has almost the same sensitivity to inner and outer
flaws.1) The reason is that it detects the magnetic flux that
propagates outside the pipe and contains information both
about inner and outer flaws.2) Since eddy currents induced
inside a pipe wall significantly attenuate the magnetic flux
propagating inside the pipe with the distance from the exciter,
the magnetic flux propagating outside the pipe becomes
dominant at a region sufficiently away from the exciter.
Consequently, just situating a detector away from the exciter
makes it possible to detect inner and outer flaws with almost
the same sensitivity.
Several studies have attempted to use RFECT to inspect
back-side grooves appearing in a plate.3­9) A problem with
the application is how to create a region where the magnetic
flux propagating on the opposite side of the plate, which
contains information both about surface-side and back-side
grooves, is dominant. To overcome this difficulty, earlier
studies have used shields to selectively attenuate the
magnetic flux propagating on the surface-side of the plate.
That is, the detector and/or exciter need to be surrounded by
a metallic object so that the magnetic flux propagating on the
opposite side of the plate is effectively detected.
Earlier studies have validated the effectiveness of RFECT
in inspecting back-side grooves in a plate both in numerical
simulations and experiment. However, a shield makes it
difficult to handle coils; the shield also makes noise
especially when it is made from a magnetic material. From
a practical point of view, the presence of a shield is therefore
not preferable. Low-frequency eddy current testing (LFECT),
+
Graduate Student, Tohoku University, East China University of Science
and Technology. Corresponding author, E-mail: jingwang8604@gmail.
com
which does not need any magnetic shield, would be more
advantageous, if it was comparable to RFECT in detecting
back-side grooves of a metal plate. However, no quantitative
comparison between RFECT and LFECT has been carried
out by inspecting back-side grooves in a plate.
Based on the background above, we aim to compare
RFECT and LFECT when inspecting back-side grooves in a
plate. We carry out experiments and numerical simulations to
find out the condition under which LFECT has almost the
same sensitivity as RFECT. Subsequent numerical inves-
tigations reveal the physical nature of the condition.
2. Experimental Verification
Figure 1 illustrates the specimens and the coil used in this
study. We used three metal plates made of SM490. They
measure 500 mm in length, 300 mm in width and 6 mm in
thickness, and contain rectangular grooves with a constant
length of 150 mm, width of 10 mm and different depths of 1,
2 and 3 mm. Grooves are positioned over only half of the
metal plate in order to measure noise by the other half of
the plate. The coil consists of a single exciter and a single
detector whose axes are parallel to the surface of the plate.
The number of turns of the exciter and detector are 1082 and
2245 respectively. The outer and inner diameters of the
exciter are 14 and 9 mm. The detector has the same diameters
with the exciter. The lengths of the exciter and detector are
30 and 10 mm respectively. A U-shaped shield was prepared
with a thickness of 7 mm, made of the same material as
the metal plate, to conduct RFECT inspection. We used an
exciting frequency of 20 Hz and a coil interval (Fig. 1) of
85 mm for RFECT inspection on the basis of preliminary
simulations. In contrast, we used exciting frequencies of 20
and 220 Hz and coil intervals of 85 and 30 mm for LFECT
inspections that did not use the shield in order to evaluate
the effects of exciting frequency and coil interval. The
lower frequency of 20 Hz was chosen because the depth of
 Evaluation of Sensitivity of Remote Field Eddy Current Testing and Low-Frequency Eddy Current Testing 91

Fig. 1 Geometry of specimen, coils and shield used in the experiment.

(a)

Fig. 2 Experimental apparatus when RFECT inspected the back-side

groove of the metal plate.

(b)

penetration at the frequency becomes almost same with the

thickness of the specimen as shown below; the higher
frequency of 220 Hz was chosen because it provides
sufficient difference in the depth of penetration from 20 Hz
for the further discussion as well as the stability of the
experimental setup.
Figure 2 shows the experimental setup adopted. It con-
sists of a signal generator, a power amplifier, a lock-in
amplifier, an X-Y stage, an A/D convertor and a computer.
An AC voltage with 1.5 Vp-p was produced by the signal
generator and then amplified to 15 Vp-p by the power
amplifier to excite the exciter. The signal induced in the
detector was measured by the lock-in amplifier and gathered
by the computer through the A/D converter. The X-Y stage Fig. 3 Scanning signals for inspection of grooves by LFECT with a
fixed the coil and moved the metal plate one-dimensionally frequency of 20 Hz and coil interval of 85 mm. (a) Surface-side groove,
(b) back-side groove.
with a pitch of 3 mm. Both sides of the specimens were
measured to gather signals due to surface-side and back-side
grooves.
The results of the experiments are shown in Figs. 3­6. The presence of the shield. That is, LFECT has almost the same
horizontal lines in the figures indicate the maximum noise sensitivity as RFECT to back-side grooves. Figure 5 reveals
amplitude obtained during the coil scans where no groove is that using higher-frequency deteriorates the sensitivity of
situated. The origin of the horizontal axes of the figure is LFECT to backside grooves, which can be well explained
defined as the position of exciter and detector depicted in by a shallower penetration depth. In contrast, Fig. 6 indicates
Fig. 7. Figures 3 and 4 confirm that signals owing to the that shortening the coil interval also leads to a poor sensitivity
back-side grooves were clearly obtained regardless of the to back-side grooves.
92 J. Wang, N. Yusa, H. Pan, T. Takagi and H. Hashizume

(a) (b)

Fig. 4 Scanning signals for inspection of grooves by RFECT with a frequency of 20 Hz and coil interval of 85 mm. (a) Surface-side
groove, (b) back-side groove.

(a) (b)

Fig. 5 Scanning signals for inspection of grooves by LFECT with a frequency of 220 Hz and coil interval of 85 mm. (a) Surface-side
groove, (b) back-side groove.

(a) (b)

Fig. 6 Scanning signals for inspection of grooves by LFECT with a frequency of 20 Hz and coil interval of 30 mm. (a) Surface-side
groove, (b) back-side groove.

3. Analysis by Numerical Simulation Comsol Multiphysics 4.2a. The configuration of the simu-
lations is identical to the one presented in Fig. 1. The
Numerical simulations were carried out for further study. conductivity and relative permeability of the metal plate are
The simulations used a commercial finite-element software, 3.0e6 S/m and 80 respectively. If we neglect the nonlinearity
 Evaluation of Sensitivity of Remote Field Eddy Current Testing and Low-Frequency Eddy Current Testing 93

(a)

Fig. 7 Diagram of the scanning process.

of the magnetic property because of the weak magnetic flux

density, then the governing equation is
ðj½·  ½2 ¾ÞA þ ®1 r  r  A ¼ Je ð1Þ
(b)
where ½ is the angular frequency, · the conductivity, ¾ the
permittivity, A the magnetic vector potential, ® the perme-
ability and Je the current density of the exciter. We discretized
the plate with hexahedral edge elements and discretized the
rest of the domain with tetrahedral edge elements. The total
number of elements was 422,858. The size of the computa-
tional domain was 800 mm © 800 mm © 800 mm, and we
imposed a boundary condition of n © A = 0 on the external
boundary of the domain.
Figure 8 presents the results of the simulations to validate
the experimental results. To evaluate the sensitivity to back-
side grooves more clearly, the figure shows the relationship
between the depth of a groove and the maximum signals due
to the groove normalized by the maximum signal owing to
a surface-side groove with a depth of 3 mm measured under
the same condition. The results qualitatively agree with the
experimental results, although there is a slight discrepancy (c)
mainly because of the presence of noise and unclear
electromagnetic characteristics of the materials.
Figure 9 shows the difference the shield makes in the
distribution of the Poynting vector on the cross-sectional
surface containing the centers of the exciter and the detector.
The figure clearly indicates that with the shield there is an
energy path coming from the opposite side of the specimen.
In contrast, without the shield there is no region where the
magnetic flux propagating on the opposite side of the plate is
dominant. These results confirm that although LFECT and
RFECT for the inspection of plate look similar as both of
them need to situate the detector away from the exciter, a
shield is indeed indispensable for realizing RFECT contrary
to what recent publications indicate.6,9)
Figure 10 shows how the magnetic flux density,
sqrt{[real(Bx)]2 + [imag(Bx)]2 + [real(By)]2 + [imag(By)]2 + Fig. 8 Normalized amplitude change with depth of groove. (a) RFECT and
[real(Bz)]2 + [imag(Bz)]2}, on the surface-side and back-side LFECT with a frequency of 20 Hz and coil interval of 85 mm, (b) LFECT
of the metal plate changes with the coil distance. Comparing with a coil interval of 85 mm and frequency of 20 and 220 Hz, (c) LFECT
Fig. 10(a) with Fig. 10(b), whose results are obtained with with a frequency of 20 Hz and coil interval of 85 and 30 mm.
relatively low frequency by RFECT and LFECT respectively,
the penetration depth reaches 7.26 mm at 20 Hz. These results
can reasonably explain why LFECT has a similar sensitivity probably caused by the larger difference between the metal
for inspecting grooves in a metal plate as RFECT does: The flux density on the surface-side and back-side of the metal
magnetic flux density on the surface-side and back-side of the plate at a relatively near coil interval. Figure 10(c) shows the
metal plate are similar. Figure 10(b) also shows that the low results for LFECT with a relatively high frequency, where the
efficiency for inspecting back-side grooves using LFECT is penetration depth reaches 2.19 mm at 220 Hz. Compared with
94 J. Wang, N. Yusa, H. Pan, T. Takagi and H. Hashizume

(a)

(b)

Fig. 9 Comparison of Poynting vector for a frequency of 20 Hz. (a) RFECT, (b) LFECT.

(a) (b)

(c)

Fig. 10 Magnetic flux density on surface-side and back-side of metal plate.

(a) RFECT for a frequency of 20 Hz, (b) LFECT for a frequency of 20 Hz,
(c) LFECT for a frequency of 220 Hz.
 Evaluation of Sensitivity of Remote Field Eddy Current Testing and Low-Frequency Eddy Current Testing
Fig. 10(b), these results demonstrate the negative effect of
high frequency on inspecting back-side grooves in a metal
plate.
4. Conclusion
This study compared LFECT and RFECT from the
viewpoint of inspecting back-side grooves in a metal plate.
Experimental and numerical evaluations revealed that
LFECT has similar sensitivity to that of RFECT when a
relatively low frequency and a relatively far coil interval are
used at the same time. Subsequent numerical investigations
confirmed that the essential mechanisms of the two methods
are different from each other.
The results obtained in this study indicate it is necessary to
situate the detector sufficiently far away from the exciter in
order to estimate the sensitivity of LFECT to the back-side
grooves appearing in a metal plate on the basis of the depth of
penetration. The advantage of LFECT over RFECT is that it
does not need shields that would work as additional noise
source especially when the shield is magnetic and also would
make coil handling easier. In contrast, the superiority of
RFECT is mainly that higher frequencies are applicable,
which enables faster inspection and also makes signals more
stable.
95
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Tohoku University Global
COE Program ® World Center of Education and Research
for Trans-disciplinary Flow Dynamics. The authors thank
Mr. Toshiaki Ichihara and Mr. Ryoichi Urayama for their
technical support during experiments.
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