A planar EMT system for the detection of faults on thin metallic plates

This paper describes a novel planar electromagnetic tomography system for the detection of conductivity inhomogeneity on a metallic plate. The proposed system differs from traditional electromagnetic inductance tomography (EMT) systems in its spatial arrangements of coils. Sensor coils are distributed to form a circular array with their axes not parallel but perpendicular to the plate under inspection. The forward solution for the sensor array next to a homogeneous conductive plate is based on the analytical solution provided by Cheng. The sensitivity matrix for a prototype sensor was computed by numerical evaluation of the analytical solution. For the inverse solution, a modified Newton-Raphson method was used to adjust the conductivity distribution to fit a set of inductances measured from the sensor array in a least-squared sense. Frequency-dependent sensitivity analysis was performed to find an optimum testing frequency. The far-field and near-field effects in electrical tomography are discussed. Good estimates for the conductivity distribution were obtained at the optimum frequency. Experimental tests were performed by taking the difference in mutual inductance of the coil pairs when placed next to a homogeneous reference conductor and next to a conductor with faults. Inverse results based on experimental data verified this method.