IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 42, NO.

4, APRIL 2006 1419

Calculation of Eddy Current Testing Probe Signal

With Global Approximation
József Pávó1 and Dominique Lesselier2
Budapest University of Technology and Economics, H-1521 Budapest, Hungary
Département de Recherche en Electromagnétisme, Laboratoire des Signaux et Systèmes (CNRS-SUPÉLEC-UPS) 3,
Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
Global approximating function sets applicable to the solution of the integral equation used to calculate an eddy current testing probe
signal are proposed. Rectangularly-shaped cracks normal to the surface of plate specimens are considered. The approximating functions
are orthogonal harmonic functions satisfying the boundary conditions at the edges of the crack. The calculations using the proposed
approximating functions are fast, numerically stable and provide a robust alternative to other methods used in the literature. A number
of numerical examples are shown for illustration and discussed.
Index Terms—Boundary integral equations, eddy current testing, piecewise linear approximation, polynomial approximation.

I. INTRODUCTION various possible cracks within a conducting slab. Then, pros and
cons, and the computational aspects of the described method,
E DDY CURRENT TESTING (ECT) probe response cal-
culation has been intensively investigated in the last two
decades [1]–[9]. Although several computational models and
are discussed via numerical examples.

numerical realizations have been published, advanced ECT in- II. THEORY
dustry still stimulates research by urging for fast and robust A. Integral Equation and Probe Signal
codes that can meet their requirements in both probe design and The ECT probe signal due to an infinitesimally thin crack
defect qualification. represented by the surface can be calculated by solving the
One possible class of calculation methods is based on vari- first-kind integral equation [2]
ational formulations [4]–[6] or edge element integral formula-
tions [8]. The other possibility is to apply Green’s function tech-
niques to volumetric [1], [9] or surface integral equations [2],
[3], [7]. In the case of integral formulations the unknown quan- (1)
tity is zero outside the volume (in the case of a thin crack, outside where is the normal component of the unknown current
the surface) of the defect. Methods discussed in the literature are dipole density function (the normal component is understood
solving the integral equation by discretizing the defect and ap- with respect to the surface ), is the angular frequency of the
proximating the unknown functions usually with pulse [1], [2] exciting current, and is the conductor permeability. is the
or piecewise linear functions [3], [7]. element of the Green’s dyad which transforms the normal compo-
In this paper we propose a global approximation of the un- nent of the current dipole density into the one of the electric field.
known quantity by using harmonic functions that are satisfying represents the normal component of the primary electric field
the boundary conditions at the edge(s) of the crack. We demon- generated by the exciting coil in the homogeneous specimen.
strate the merits of this approximation by considering the in- Once obtained the solution of (1), the impedance change of
finitesimally thin-crack model [2]. If we can accept the restric- the excitation, that is, the signal of the ECT probe is given by [2]
tion of assuming only rectangularly-shaped cracks, the proposed
global approximation is shown to be a fast and robust alterna-
tive to the usual discretized solutions. Among other attractive (2)
features of the method, we may emphasize its numerical sta-
bility and the fact that the number of unknowns can be consid- where is the imposed current of the source.
erably reduced compared, e.g., to the case when piecewise linear
approximating functions are employed. Also, based on the co- B. Approximating Function Sets
efficients of the approximating functions, the accuracy of the
The studied ECT configuration is shown in Fig. 1. One as-
solution can be estimated; consequently the quality of the result
sumes that the specimen is a metal plate infinite along the and
could be controlled without the user’s interaction.
axes of a Cartesian coordinate system and that it extends be-
Below, we present the proposed method by reviewing the nu-
tween the (top) and (bottom) plane, the eddy-
merical model and giving the set of approximating functions for
current source being set in the upper half-space. A rect-
angular crack is found in the plane with middle at , its
depth and its length being denoted as and , respectively. The
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMAG.2006.872490 top of the crack is at depth .
0018-9464/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
1420 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 42, NO. 4, APRIL 2006

C. Testing Function Set

The method of moments is used to solve the integral equa-
tion (1). Accordingly, the approximating functions (4) and the
following Dirac testing functions, , are used to transform (1)
into a set of linear equations (point matching)

(10)

where
Fig. 1. Schematic drawing of a typical ECT arrangement.

It has been shown [7] that in our case the dipole den-
sity function satisfies the following boundary condition: (11)

(3) D. Discussion on the Numerical Realization

The method presented in [3] is used to calculate the coeffi-
where represents the edges of embedded in metal and cients of the discretized integral equation. They are obtained
those on any of the two surfaces of the plate (edges breaking after performing a two-dimensional inverse Fourier transform
the surface of the plate). Note that this boundary condition is on a function given analytically (this function is actually the
automatically satisfied by the solution of (1), [7]. spatial Fourier transform of the normal component of the elec-
The unknown density in (1) is approximated as tric field due to a dipole density source described by one of the
approximating functions). One of the important advantages of
(4) the global approximation presented here compared to local ap-
proximations (like the piecewise linear approximation reported
in [3]) is that the inverse Fourier transform can be performed
The approximating functions are selected from harmonic easily. Indeed, the Fourier transform of the electric field gener-
functions fulfilling the boundary conditions (3). ated by a dipole density source described by a smooth exten-
The set of approximating functions is the following for cracks sive-in-space function (that is, by any of the (5)–(8) global ap-
: proximating functions) is smooth and well bounded so as it is
i) opening at the top of the plate (ID cracks, ) easy to inverse transform it numerically. On the contrary, one
has to take special care of the inverse Fourier transform when a
(5) local approximation is used.
As it has been explained, point-matching is used for the solu-
ii) opening at the bottom of the plate (OD cracks, ) tion of the integral equation. It is known that the numerical sta-
bility of this method is not particularly good. In our case, how-
ever, the numerical performance of the point-matching is shown
to be rather good. The reason of this is the fact that—due to the
global approximating functions—the functions to be matched
(6)
are spatially smooth functions.
iii) buried cracks whose top is at depth
III. EXAMPLES AND EVALUATION OF THE METHOD
(7) A. TEM Benchmark no. 15#1
Our first example is the frequently cited TEM Benchmark
iv) cracks traversing the whole plate (through-cracks)
15#1.1 In this example the signal of a relatively large pancake
coil above a large slot is calculated. The main parameters of
the arrangement are as follows. Pancake coil excitation: fre-
(8) quency: 900 Hz, inner radius: 6.15 mm, outer radius: 12.4 mm,
length: 6.15 mm, lift-off: 0.88 mm, turns: 3790; aluminum alloy
If the scalar product of functions and is defined as plate: conductivity: 30.6 MS/m, thickness: 12.22 mm; ID crack:
length: 12.6 mm, depth: 5.0 mm, width: 0.28 mm. In Fig. 2
(9) the real and imaginary parts of the measured and calculated
impedance variations are plotted. In addition to the global ap-
proximation presented here we have carried out the calculations
the above approximating functions form an orthonormed func-
tion set. 1http://ics.ec-lyon.fr/team.html
PÁVÓ AND LESSELIER: CALCULATION OF ECT PROBE SIGNAL WITH GLOBAL APPROXIMATION 1421

Fig. 2. Impedance variation versus the location of the probe. Measured

[real (o), imaginary (x)], calculated with global approximation [real (solid),
imaginary (dashed)] and with linear approximation [real (dash-dotted),
imaginary (dotted)].

also by using piecewise linear approximation on a regular grid

(the method presented earlier in [3]).
As it can be seen in Fig. 2, the calculated crack signals provide
a good approximation to the measured ones. This good agree-
ment is due to the fact that the size of the crack is large; conse-
quently the measurement is reliable (high signal-to-noise ratio)
and the thin-crack approximation (zero-thickness) of the real
crack (which has actually finite thickness, 0.28 mm) gives us
a good result. The number of unknowns used for the piecewise
linear and global approximations are 976 and 250, respectively.
Corresponding computations on a standard PC took about 2 min
for the global approximations and about five times more for the
piecewise linear approximation.
B. JSAEM Benchmark
The second example is one of the JSAEM Benchmarks (step
2#1–2) [10]. The important parameters of the arrangement are
as follows. Pancake coil excitation: frequency: 150 kHz, inner
radius: 0.6 mm, outer radius: 1.6 mm, length: 0.8 mm, lift-off:
0.5 mm, turns: 140; plate: conductivity: 1.0 MS/m, thickness:
1.25 mm; ID and OD cracks are assumed: length: 10 mm, depth:
0.5 mm, width: 0.21 mm. The measured and the calculated re-
sults using both approximation methods are displayed in Fig. 3.
In this example the discrepancy between the calculation and
the measurement is somewhat larger than it was previously. The
reasons could be the larger ambiguity of the measurement re-
sults due to the smaller signal-to-noise ratio and the fact that the
performance of the zero-thickness crack model in this case is
not very good since in practice the thickness of the studied EDM
notch (a notch manufactured by Electric Discharge Machining)
is about 40% of its depth. We have made a number of numerical
experiments and observed that when the depth of the crack is
increased by 0.05 mm the predicted signal becomes very close
to the measured one for both ID and OD cracks. Notice that this
virtual increase is within the range of the manufacturing toler-
ance of the EDM notch. The number of unknowns used for the
piecewise linear and global approximations are 549 and 150, re-
spectively. The computation on a standard PC took about 1 min
for the global approximations and again about five times more
for the piecewise linear approximation.
Fig. 3. Impedance variations versus the location of the probe for the ID (a) and
the OD (b) cracks. Measured [real (o), imaginary (x)] calculated with global
approximation [real (solid), imaginary (dashed)] and with linear approximation
[real (dash-dotted), imaginary (dotted)].
C. Discussion on the Numerical Examples
Further tests have been performed so as to evaluate the pre-
sented global approximation against the piecewise linear ap-
proximation. They included the comparison of the calculated
signals with experimental ones. All results are similar with those
presented in the above. In short: 1) numerical results usually
underestimate those measured (the signal calculated with the
global approximation always underestimate the measured one);
2) the results calculated with the global approximation always
underestimate the ones obtained with the piecewise linear ap-
proximation; 3) the computations carried out with the global
approximation usually perform three to five times faster than
the ones with the piecewise linear approximation.
An explanation of such behavior could be the following:
1) The experimental results are taken on EDM notches that
provide—in view of their finite thickness—larger signals than
those given by the thin-crack model. The signal discrepancies,
however, are usually in the range that can be compensated by
virtual increase of the crack depths by 25% of the thickness of
the EDM notches. 2) Differences between the calculated signals
yielded by the two sets of approximation functions account
for the fact that the boundary conditions at the perimeter of
the crack (3) are satisfied only approximately by the dipole
1422
Fig. 4. Absolute value of the dipole density distribution, p(y; z ) along the
surface of the crack calculated with (a) global and (b) piecewise linear approx-
imating functions.
layer density, , when using the piecewise linear approximation
whereas the exact boundary conditions (3) are enforced when
using the global approximating functions; consequently the
signals calculated from the former distributions are larger
than those calculated from the latter ones. In this respect we
believe that the numerical results provided by the global ap-
proximation are in better accord with the thin crack model (and
this means that the signals are more distant from the ones which
are measured on EDM notches). In Fig. 4, distributions
of the ID crack of the JSAEM benchmark are compared for the
two sets of approximating functions when the exciting coil is
centrally located above the crack. 3) The good computational
performance of the global approximation is explained by the
small number of unknowns and the good spectral behavior
discussed in Section II-D.
D. Coefficients of the Global Approximating Functions
Let us assume that one has the solution of (1) for a given
number of approximating functions ( and in
(4)). The numerical error can be estimated by, e.g., repeating the
calculations with another discretizations, say,
and . If the two results appear close to one another
(of course the and values must be significantly different),
we can conclude that the numerical error is acceptable. In ef-
fect, it is a nice property of the global approximating functions
that the elements of the system matrix of the discretized inte-
gral equations calculated for given and can be employed
for calculations led with a finer discretization , since
only the coefficients associated to the extra functions (indexes
are to be computed. No-
tice that if the local approximation is used (for example, a piece-
wise linear approximation), every element of the system matrix
must be recalculated whenever the discretization is changed.
From several numerical experiments we have found that the
growth of the number of the approximating functions resulted
into a monotonous and rapidly convergent evolution of the re-
sults (the examples presented above are calculated for a level
of discretization such that the results have already converged
properly). These experiments exemplify the numerical stability
of the calculations using global approximating functions.
In addition to the described properties, we have observed that
the coefficients with same and indexes are very close to one
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 42, NO. 4, APRIL 2006
another even if they are obtained for very different discretiza-
tions (very different and values). To show this, we have
calculated the coefficients for and and
for and in the case of the JSAEM example
with ID crack. The difference between the corresponding co-
efficients is smaller than 1% of the value of the coefficient of
largest magnitude. The same behavior is seen for other exam-
ples. This attractive property of the coefficients together with
the observation that they are monotonously decreasing for large
coefficient numbers, enables us to make a simple error estima-
tion even based on one single calculation. As a consequence, to
design an algorithm for automated discretization of the crack is
feasible.
IV. CONCLUSION
Global approximating function sets applicable to the solution
of the integral equation used to calculate the signal of an ECT
probe are proposed. Rectangularly-shaped cracks normal to the
surface of plate specimens are considered. The method is com-
putationally effective and numerically stable. Based on the co-
efficients of the solution one can also easily estimate the error
of the calculations. The computational efficiency, the robustness
and the possibility of automated crack discretization make the
method attractive for industrial applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by the Hungarian Scientific
Research Fund under Grants T-035264 and T-049389.
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Manuscript received June 22, 2005 (e-mail: pavo@evtsz1.evt.bme.hu).