Research on Defect Detection of Curved Specimen by Curved Rigid Coil Array

With the development of aviation industry, defect detection of aircraft complex curved parts by eddy current array testing (ECAT) is popular. In this paper, a curved rigid coil array was proposed to detect curved surface defects. The curved surface defect detection model and planar defect detection model with different curvature were established by finite element methods simulation software. And the influence of coil size, defect size and position on the curved surface detection performance of rigid coil array was analyzed. The results show that the smaller the coil is, the less the curvature affects the difference between curved surface detection and planar detection. And the performance of curved array with small rigid coil type shows good stability in term to effect of defect size and position. This study can provide a basis for curved surface defect detection by curved rigid coil array using the planar defect detection rules.