Enhancement of the Excitation Efficiency of the Non-Contact Magnetostrictive Sensor for Pipe Inspection by Adjusting the Alternating Magnetic Field Axial Length

The non-contact magnetostrictive sensor (MsS) has been widely used in the guided wave testing of pipes, cables, and so on. However, it has a disadvantage of low excitation efficiency. A new method for enhancing the excitation efficiency of the non-contact MsS for pipe inspection using guided waves, by adjusting the axial length of the excitation magnetic field, is proposed. A special transmitter structure, in which two copper rings are added beside the transmitter coil, is used to adjust the axial length at the expense of weakening the excitation magnetic field. An equivalent vibration model is presented to analyze the influence of the axial length variation. The final result is investigated by experiments. Results show that the excitation efficiency of the non-contact MsS is enhanced in the whole inspection frequency range of the L(0,2) mode if the axial length is adjusted to a certain value. Moreover that certain axial length is the same for pipes of different sizes but made of the same material.