Study of the Influence of the Backplate Position on EMAT Thickness-Measurement Signals

Nondestructive testing (NDT) is an essential method for assessing structural integrity in the oil and gas industry. Electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) have been extensively used to detect the wall-thickness reduction of plate-like structures, because they do not require direct contact. The pulse intervals of echoes are used to calculate the remnant thickness of structures. If the width of a single pulse is too large, multiple pulses will be superimposed, making it more difficult to extract the pulse interval. Thus, the width of a single pulse affects the resolution of measurements. This paper investigates the impacts of the backplate position on the pulse width and amplitude of thickness-measurement signals, using EMATs. By means of impedance modeling and measurement, it can be shown that the output impedance of the receiving coil is strongly influenced by the coil-backplate gap. With the increment in the coil-backplate gap, the signal amplitude and damping coefficient increase, while the self-resonant frequency decreases. By means of signal measurements on the specimen, it is shown that the pulse width and the signal amplitude can be significantly influenced by the backplate position. By reducing the coil–backplate gap, the pulse width can be reduced by over 80%, and by increasing the gap, the signal amplitude can be increased by over 300%. These research results can be used to optimize EMAT design, thereby suppressing the superposition of pulse echoes.