INTRODUCTION TO NONDESTRUCTIVE TESTING

1.15

FIGURE 1-13

Early fluorescent penetrant unit. (Courtesy of C. Hellier.)

Even though the principles of eddy current testing (ET) had their roots in 1831, when Michael Faraday discovered the principles of electromagnetic induction, it wasnt until the 1940s that the full potential of this method was realized. The first recorded eddy current test was performed by E. E. Hughes in 1879; he was able to distinguish the difference between various metals by noting a change in excitation frequency, which basically resulted from the effects of test material resistivity and magnetic permeability. But it was not until the year 1926 that the first eddy current instrument, which was used to measure material thickness, was developed. Through World War II and the early 1940s, further developments resulted in better and more practical eddy current instruments. Figure 1-14 illustrates an early instrument developed by the Foerster Institute. Notice that a standard was placed in the primary coil and compared to the response from the part in the secondary coil. In the 1950s, Forster also developed advanced instruments with impedance plane signal displays, which made it possible to discriminate between a number of parameters. Since the beginning of time, it has been known that materials can emit certain noises when they are stressed. For example, when a piece of wood is bent, creaking or crying sounds can be heard. In fact, as the noise intensity increases, it can, in many cases, serve as a warning that the object is ultimately going to fail or break apart. In the 1950s, the first extensive study of this phenomenon, which we now call acoustic emission testing (AE), was reported by Dr. Joseph Kaiser in Munich, Germany, in his Ph.D. thesis. Basically, his studies demonstrated that acoustic emission events were caused by small failures in a material that was being subjected to stress. Much of the original work was done in the audible frequency sound range, but today, for obvious reasons, most acoustic emission monitoring is conducted at very high or ultrasonic frequencies. AE has grown significantly and this method has become a valuable NDT method for determining condition, behavior, and the in-service characteristics of many materials and structures. The use of high frequency sound for the detection of discontinuities in materials was