Analysis of Coil-Dependent Receiving Frequency Response of PPM EMAT Receiver Using Equivalent Model

Period-permanent-magnet (PPM) electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) has been widely used in shear horizontal (SH) ultrasonic guided wave testing owing to its advantages, such as non-contact coupling, and convenient to excite SH waves. However, its poor transduction efficiency leads to weak signals and limits the lift-off performance. This article investigates how to improve the signal amplitude by adjusting the number of turns of the racetrack coil. The inductive coupling process of the PPM-EMAT receiver is first studied using the equivalent circuit method, and the corresponding equivalent model is obtained. Aiming at the effects of coil configurations, the equivalent impedance parameters of multilayer racetrack coils are analyzed by calculations and measurements. The proposed model can be used to predict the receiving frequency response of PPM-EMAT receivers with different coil structures, and it has been verified experimentally. It can be obtained that by choosing an appropriate coil configuration and matching resistance, the SH wave signal amplitude can be increased by 3 times.