Application of Amorphous and Nanocrystalline Soft Magnetic Materials in Balanced-Force-Type Electromagnetic Relay.

The magnetic properties of soft magnetic materials, including their saturation magnetic induction strength and permeability, significantly affect the dynamic characteristics of electromagnetic relays. However, the soft materials most commonly used for relays in the magnetic conductive components of electromagnetic systems, such as electrical pure iron, limit further relay design improvement and optimization to a certain extent. Thus, this paper proposes the use of amorphous and nanocrystalline soft magnetic materials with good high-frequency magnetic properties in magnetic circuits. A wavelet analysis was conducted on the high-frequency components of the coil current while the relay operated, and the corresponding magnetic materials were selected. Considering the challenges in processing amorphous and nanocrystalline materials and collecting test data for the accuracy verification of simulation methods, we prepared a scaled-up prototype for use in dynamic characteristic tests. The simulation method was improved, yielding more accurate simulation results regarding the relay's dynamic characteristics. On this basis, six replacement schemes using amorphous and nanocrystalline materials were considered. The test results proved that this application could improve the relay's dynamic characteristics. Finally, a full-size sample with an iron core consisting of nanocrystalline alloy 1K107B was prepared, and the conclusions were verified in tests.

Broadband torsional guided wave magnetostrictive patch transducer with circumferential alternating permanent magnet array for structural health monitoring.

T(0,1) guided wave is non-dispersive and has been widely used in the long distance inspection and condition monitoring. Magnetostrictive patch transducer (MPT) is a new type of EMAT with high energy conversion efficiency, which can be used to generate and receive torsional guided waves in pipe samples. In this paper, a permanent magnet broadband torsional guided wave MPT composed of a linear coil EMAT array is proposed. The MPT was experimentally verified to be broadband and the bandwidth is 230.79 kHz when using a 5 mm wide linear coil. The wavelength corresponding to the center frequency of the transducer is about 0.6 times the width of the coil. Base on the design, through-hole defects with diameters of 3-6 mm in the 2-mm-thick aluminum plate were quantified by frequency sweeping detection, and the relative error is less than 7 %. Compared with the single-frequency guided wave signal reflected by through-hole defects, the variation pattern of the quantitative results using frequency sweeping can contribute to a more accurate prediction of the remaining service life of the test specimen.

Design Method of Multiwavelength EMATs Based on Spatial Domain Harmonic Control.

Conventional electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) are generally only used to generate and detect guided waves with a single wavelength, which increases their sensitivity at that particular wavelength but limits their application scenarios and the accuracy of defect assessment. This article proposes a design method for multiwavelength EMATs based on spatial-domain harmonic control. First, the EMAT model is analyzed, where it is then outlined that the eddy-current density distribution of the specimen is equivalent to the spatial low-pass filtering of the coil-current density distribution. This shows that the multiwavelength guided waves can be achieved as long as the spatial distribution of the coil-current density contains those multiple harmonics that are desired. It is then proposed that the structure of the EMAT coil is equivalent to the spatial sampled pulse sequences of a spatial signal. The coil parameter design based on pulse modulation technology is proposed. Taking a dual-wavelength EMAT design for Lamb waves as an example, details of the coil parameter design are presented. The simulation and experiment with the dual-wavelength EMAT proved the correctness of the proposed method. Finally, an experiment with a three-wavelength EMAT demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed method in designing multiwavelength EMATs.

Analysis of multiple wavelengths of Lamb waves generated by meander-line coil EMATs.

The electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) with a meander-line coil possess the capability of generating Lamb waves carrying multiple wavelengths, and the characteristics of multiple wavelengths is analyzed by developing a spatial transversal filter model for the EMAT. It is shown that the characteristics is due to the wavelength spectrum of the EMATs, which is a wavelength-domain representation of information about the wavelength components, and the magnitude of each components is modulated by an envelope which depends on the geometric pattern of the meander-line coil. The characteristics of multiple wavelengths might cause the multi-modes phenomenon, therefore a method for removing the effect of multiple wavelengths is proposed. It is shown that the effect can be removed by designing an EMAT which can produce a special envelop to suppress the harmonic wavelengths. Experiments are set up to study the characteristics of multiple wavelengths and verify the validity of the proposed method.

Numerical and experimental analysis of unidirectional meander-line coil electromagnetic acoustic transducers.

The elastic waves generated by traditional meander-line coil electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) propagate in two directions, overlapping the echo signals from defects with the same distances, and the defect echo signal is hard to distinguish from the edge-reflected signal when the EMATs are near the edge of a specimen. In this paper, a unidirectional EMAT with two meander-line coils is proposed. A finite element model is used to simulate the directivity of the Rayleigh and shear vertical waves generated by these EMATs. Six transducers are fabricated using the printed circuit technique. The unidirectional Rayleigh wave and shear vertical wave are tested, and the results agree well with the simulation.

Minimizing influence of multi-modes and dispersion of electromagnetic ultrasonic lamb waves.

Electromagnetic ultrasonic (EMU) Lamb waves excited by electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) possess many advantages in NDT. However, their characteristic multi-modes and dispersion are disadvantageous for inspection and restrict further improvements in their real applications. By deducing the excitation equation of EMU Lamb waves, the primary design parameters of EMATs and the characteristic equation of Lamb waves are combined, and excitation curves based on the excitation equation are plotted to aid the design of EMATs. The excitation characteristic of EMU Lamb waves on different thickness of plates is analyzed according to the excitation curves. The influence of multi-modes of EMU Lamb waves is minimized by choosing reasonable operating points and operating zones to excite a single-mode Lamb wave or multi-mode Lamb waves with identical or approximate propagation velocities. The influence of dispersion is minimized by searching corresponding points whose slope of group velocity tends to zero. The validity of the proposed method is verified by experiments.