Flexible Differential Butterfly-Shape Eddy Current Array Sensor for Defect Detection of Screw Thread

Eddy current testing (ECT), is a non-destructive method widely applied in detecting defects of metal plates based on the principle of electromagnetic induction. The flexible eddy current testing (FECT) has been developed from ECT. What’s more, it’s also an effective method that is given a higher priority in defect detection of metal with complex surface structure due to its flexibility and small size. An arrayed differential flexible butterfly-shape eddy current sensor is proposed to detect the surface defect of iron screw thread in this paper, which has one butterfly-shape coil, four sets of differential receiver (RX) coils and one top RX coil, and the proposed sensor is designed as butterfly-shape with a certain folding angle to match with the curvature of the internal and external screw thread, which can solve the lift-off problem of screw thread defect detection at the bottom. The theoretical analysis illustrates the design principle for the proposed sensors. The simulation based on COMSOL Multiphysics is applied to illustrate the probability of the proposed sensor, and the experimental testing system is adopted to verify the high performance of the proposed sensors. The results of simulation and experiment are identical, which show the flexible differential butterfly-shape array eddy current sensor can not only improve the sensitivity and reduce the error rate, but also orientate the defect on the surface of the screw thread.