Search

Magnetic Barkhausen Noise (MBN) is a method being currently considered by many research and development centers, as it provides knowledge about the properties and current state of the examined material. Due to the practical aspects, magnetic anisotropy evaluation is one of such key areas. However, due to the non-stationary and stochastic nature of MBN, it requires searching for postprocessing procedures, allowing the extraction of crucial information on factors influencing the phenomenon. Advances in the field of the analysis of non-stationary signals by various transformations or decompositions resulting into new time- and frequency-related representations, allow the interpretation of complex sets of signals. Therefore, in this paper, several time-frequency transformations were used to analyze the data of MBN for the purpose of the magnetic anisotropy evaluation of electrical steel. The three main transform types with their modifications were considered and compared: the Short-Time Fourier Transform, the Continuous Wavelet Transform and the Smoothed Pseudo Wigner–Ville Transform. By using Exploratory Data Analysis methods and the parametrization of time-frequency representation, the qualitative and quantitative analysis was made. The STFT presented good performance on providing useful information on MBN changes while simultaneously leading to the lowest computational efforts.

Stresses and deformations are some of the main factors influencing the mechanical and magnetic properties of steels. Resonance methods, based on the utilization of high-frequency electromagnetic fields, are the ones that can provide information about the course of the magnetization process. Moreover, according to skin effect, these methods may show sensitivity to surface deformations of the examined materials as well. As a rule, however, they are used to study the properties of materials of very limited sizes. This paper presents an approach in which a system based on the ferromagnetic resonance method FMR was considered for monitoring changes of characteristics related to magnetization dynamics of steel elements subjected to deformations. First, a solution was proposed, and then a numerical analysis, as well as a construction of the system, were presented. During the study, the possibility of carrying out measurements in a wide range of electromagnetic field conditions, enabling local inspection on structures, was also analysed. The system operation was verified using a set of samples made of low carbon steel film, representing distinct states of deformation. The obtained results make it possible to clearly distinguish changes in magnetic conditions, pointing to changes in the resultant magnetic anisotropy caused by the straining process.

The paper presents a new approach to non-destructive evaluation of easy/hard magnetization axis in grain-oriented SiFe electrical steels based on the Barkhausen phenomenon and its time-frequency (TF) characteristics. Anisotropy in steels is influenced by a number of factors that formulate the global relationship and affect the Barkhausen effect. Due to the observed high variability in the dynamics of magnetic Barkhausen noise (MBN) over time, obtained for various directions in grain-oriented steel, it becomes justified to conduct MBN signal analyses in the time-frequency domain. This representation allows not only global information from MBN signal over entire period to be expressed, but also detailed relationships between properties in time and in frequency to be observed as well. This creates the opportunity to supplement the information obtained. The main aspect considered in the work is to present a procedure that allows an assessment of the resultant angular characteristics in steel. For this purpose, a sample of a conventional grain-oriented SiFe sheet was used. Measurements were made for several angular settings towards the rolling and transverse directions. A data transformation procedure based on short-time Fourier transform (STFT) as well as quantitative analysis and synthesis of information contained in the TF space was presented. Angular characteristics of selected TF parameters were shown and discussed. In addition, an analysis of the repeatability of information obtained using the proposed procedure under various measurement conditions was carried out. The relationship between the selection of calculation parameters used during transformation and the repeatability of the obtained TF distributions were demonstrated. Then the selection of the final values ​​of the calculation parameters was commented upon. Finally, the conclusions of the work carried out were discussed.

The effectiveness of the magnetic Barkhausen noise method (MBN), used for non-destructive testing of ferromagnetic materials, depends to a large extent on a number of factors determining the measurement conditions. The use of conditions allowing the highest possible level of discrimination between the various states of the materials state is of highest importance. Therefore, this paper presents an analysis of the impact of measurement conditions on Barkhausen noise signals observed for various states of the material conditions. Taking into consideration the stochastic nature of MBN and the complex characterization of its changes, the analysis was based on the time-frequency representation of the MBN signal. The paper presents selected distributions achieved using two transformation methods. In addi- tion, the extraction methods of features allowing the quantification of complex information were given. Finally, the discrimination ability for a number of parameters and features of MBN signals were deter- mined and the obtained results were discussed.

In this paper, a transducer allowing nondestructive evaluation of material state in various directions is presented. The axial-symmetry transducer is using a matrix of vector magnetic field sensors. Each sensor is utilized for the observation of three orthogonal components. First, the construction is shown and the general performance is evaluated. Then, the data processing and integration algorithm for reconstruction of the signals is presented. Finally, the operation of the transducer is verified using a low-carbon steel plate having notches of different depths and aligned at various angles to the scanning axis. The results are presented and discussed.

Due to the existing relationship between microstructural properties and magnetic ones of the ferromagnetic materials, the application potential of the magnetic Barkhausen noise (BN) method to non-destructive testing is constantly growing. However, the stochastic nature of the Barkhausen effect requires the use of advanced signal processing methods. Recently, the need to apply time-frequency (TF) transformations to the processing of BN signals arose. However, various TF methods have been used in the majority of cases for qualitative signal conditioning and no extensive analysis of TF-based information has been conducted so far. Therefore, in this paper, the wide analysis of BN TF representation was carried out. Considering the properties of TF transformations, the Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) was used. A procedure for definition of the envelopes of the TF characteristic was proposed. To verify the quality of extracted features, an analysis was performed on the basis of BN signals acquired during stress loading experiments of steel elements. First, the preliminary experiments were processed for various parameters of the measuring system and calculation procedures. The feature extraction procedure was performed for different modes of TF representations. Finally, the distributions of TF features over the loading stages are presented and their information content was validated using commonly used features derived from time T and frequency F domains.

This paper presents in detail the experimental methodologies and the results of the infrared investigation of steel samples under load. Moreover, the second electromagnetic method (EM) for nondestructive evaluation was used to monitor the fatigue process. The infrared thermography allows one to observe the global condition of the material, while the EM carries out local, detailed examination of the fatigue stage in the critical region. The presented inspection results are compared and discussed.

Two nondestructive methods are used for monitoring of fatigue process in steel samples under cyclic loading: the infrared thermography (IRT) and electromagnetic (EM). The IRT allows to observe the general global condition of the material while the EM to carry out local, detail examination of the fatigue stage in critical region. Both methods have different physical basics what allows to obtain a wider range of information about the state of the structure. Streszczenie. W pracy wykorzystano dwie nieniszczące metody badan do monitorowania procesu zmeczeniowego stalowych probek poddanych obciązeniom cyklicznym: metode termografii podczerwonej (IRT)j i elektromagnetyczną (EM). Metoda IRT umozliwia obserwacje globalnego stanu badanego materialu natomiast metoda EM pozwala na dokladną lokalną inspekcje stanu zmeczeniowego obszarow krytycznych. Z uwagi na fakt wykorzystywania odmiennych wlaściwości fizycznych do pośredniej obserwacji stanu struktury przez obie metody mozliwe jest uzyskanie szerszego zakresu komplementarnych informacji o zmianach zmeczeniowych. Dwie nieniszczące metody badan do monitorowania procesu zmeczeniowego stalowych probek poddanych obciązeniom cyklicznym

The utilization of a glass–adhesive–steel joint in modern machine and vehicle production is constantly growing. Despite the technological regime during the production process, various defects in the adhesive joints may occur. One of the major problems is lack of adhesive between joined materials. Due to the widespread use of non-transparent layers increasing adhesion, it is frequently not possible to conduct simple visual inspections. Hence, it is important to develop a non-destructive adhesive path continuity examination procedure. In that process, the different physical properties of the joint materials must be taken into account. Therefore, in this paper various testing methods were used, including ultrasound, thermographic and electromagnetic methods operating in the microwave and terahertz frequency range. Different physical phenomena of the methods allowed for examination of the joint in a wide context. In order to verify the information brought by each method, the results were transferred into common coordinate space, compared and finally integrated. Various opinion pooling strategies were conducted to fuse data, which allowed us to emphasize convergent and complementary information on adhesive continuity. The obtained results are promising and constitute the basis for further work on an integrated system for automatic evaluation of a wide range of possible defects in glass–adhesive–steel joints.

The paper presents a new approach to obtain information on magnetic anisotropy in Si&ndash, Fe grain oriented ferromagnetic steel based on the observation of the magnetic Barkhausen noise (MBN). Until now, in the literature one can only notice the MBN study of magnetic anisotropy in steels carried out in a single time or frequency domain. However, due to the observed high variability of the dynamics of the MBN phenomenon over its occurrence period, depending on the steel properties, the idea of utilization of combined time and frequency representations to obtain new or supplementary information arises. For this purpose, the MBN phenomenon was observed in various directions for steels with oriented magnetic properties. Then, using the short-time Fourier transform, time-frequency (TF) distributions were determined and features vectors enabling the quantification of crucial information were determined. Before performing the final experiments, a series of tests were carried out for different measuring conditions. As a result, it was possible to adjust the conditions enabling us to obtain the highest possible sensitivity for MBN and discrimination level between directional properties in the material. Then, an algorithm of detailed analysis and division of the TF representation into subranges was proposed, enabling the extraction of more detailed information about the phenomena occurring during the magnetization process. This allowed us to clearly indicate and then separate three areas of MBN main activity. Finally, the obtained angular distributions of selected features were presented and discussed, and further conclusions were given.

Eddy current transducer with sensing coils placed orthogonally and connected in differential mode was introduced to evaluate fatigue cracks in clad pipeline circumferential welds. A dedicated embedded electronic hardware was developed to drive the transducer and measure the electrical complex impedance of the coils, and was specifically designed for operation under autonomous in-line inspection tool. In the laboratory experiments, an automated inspection was performed with the goal to evaluate transducer&rsquo, s detectability, and different scanning speed was tested to reproduce in service situation. The results have confirmed that the introduced eddy current transducer is a potential solution for fatigue crack detection in clad circumferential weld root, while the hardware developed presented a reasonable SNR reaching the data rate required to be incorporated in an autonomous in-line inspection tool.

In this paper the technique of defects evaluation in composite materials based on a combination of active thermography method and terahertz technique is presented. The composite glass fiber sample with delaminations produced by load conditions was chosen for the tests. Active Infrared thermography with halogen lamps and terahertz technique are sensitive to changes in different physical parameters of the tested material. The combination of these techniques, performed by the data fusion of obtained measurements results allows to obtain the full information on the detected material's defect.

Increasing the number of inspection sources creates an opportunity to combine information in order to properly set the operation of the entire system, not only in terms of such factors as reliability, confidence, or accuracy, but inspection time as well. In this paper, a magnetic sensor-array-based nondestructive system was applied to inspect defects inside circular-shaped steel elements. The experiments were carried out for various sensor network strategies, followed by the fusion of multisensor data for each case. In order to combine the measurements, first data registration and then four algorithms based on spatial and transformed representations of sensor signals were applied. In the case of spatial representation, the data were combined using an algorithm operating directly on input signals, allowing pooling of information. To build the transformed representation, a multiresolution analysis based on the Laplacian pyramid was used. Finally, the quality of the obtained results was assessed. The details of algorithms are given and the results are presented and discussed. It is shown that the application of data fusion rules for magnetic multisensor inspection systems can result in the growth of reliability of proper identification and classification of defects in steel elements depending on the utilized configuration of the sensor network.