1. Introduction
For pipes used in industry, e.g., in chemical and power plants, wall thinning is one of the most serious defects [1,2]. Detection and evaluation of the thickness reduction of pipes are very important issues for prediction of lifetime of the pipes in order to avoid severe accidents. Recently many nondestructive testing techniques, such as X-ray [3], microwave [4] ultrasonic [5–7], acoustic emission [8–10], eddy current [11], thermal infrared measurements [12] have been used for the measurement of pipe wall thinning. Currently the magnetic flux leakage (MFL) method is the most commonly used pipeline inspection technique [13–16].
Local wall thinning on the inner surface of a pipe (e.g., in a nuclear power plant) may occur due to the stream of coolant flowing inside the pipe, causing a serious problem of maintenance of the piping systems. The inspection should be done from the outer side of the pipe. In Japan there is a special concern on the local wall thinning at locations under an enforcement shield that covers outside of the pipe, where a branch pipe is connected to the main one. Because the enforcement shield and the pipe wall form two layers of metal, it is difficult to inspect inside of the pipe under the enforcement shield by any ultrasonic method. Pulsed eddy current testing technology was developed in recent years to challenge this problem [17–19]. Because of its rich frequency components and applicability of large electric current, the pulsed eddy current method may show promising capability in detection and evaluation the defect in deep regions of the material. The feasibility of magnetic flux leakage method for estimation of wall thinning on pipes under reinforcing plates in nuclear power plants was also discussed. Assessment of size of a slit fabricated on underlayer of the layered specimen was shown to be possible from the flux leakage profile. Evidently conditions of wall thinning under reinfor- cing plates can be monitored by MFL methods [20–21].
The purpose of the present work is to test application of another, novel magnetic method, called magnetic adaptive testing (MAT), for inspection of wall thinning in layered ferromagnetic materials. In order to show background of the technique, pre- liminary measurements were performed on a system of carbon steel plates, demonstrating influence of the sample thickness on the measured MAT signal. Then, for testing capacity of this method, experiments were done on carbon steel plates, one of them containing an artificial slot. These results are shown in the present paper.