Recently, the paper entitled“Effects of Mechanical Scanning Speeds on Eddy-Current Detection of Cavity Defects”won the Best Paper Award of 2023 IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, which was announced the 2024 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM). This paper was completed by the team led by Prof. Zhenhua Xiong from the Robotics Institute of School of Mechanical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Prof. Kok-Meng Lee at Georgia Institute of Technology. Mr. Zhengya Guo, who is a Ph.D. candidate at SJTU, is the first author. Prof. Xiong and Prof. Lee are the co-corresponding authors.

In this paper, a 3-dimensional simulation model applicable to eddy current (EC) defect detection, which is implemented based on continuous mechanical scanning, was established using a distributed current source (DCS) method. In the model, the perturbed EC field was formulated in state space and then iteratively solved to predict the transient response of an EC testing system. With a reduced solution domain, both computational efficiency and accuracy were improved. Based on the DCS model, parametric effects of the sensing positions/directions, excitation frequencies, and scanning speeds on the detection results of cavity defects were analyzed, which led to the development of an EC probe consisting of a pair of rectangular electromagnets and a magnetic field sensor, and the estimation of the scanning speed limits for fine and coarse detection. Besides, several methods to address the implementation issues possibly encountered in practical applications have also been presented. This research aims to improve the detection efficiency in the traditional point-by-point EC testing method. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

In recent years, Prof. Xiong’s team is dedicated to research fields including motion control in robotics, intelligent manufacturing, and advanced electronic manufacturing. In recent years, they have published many papers in renowned international journals such as IEEE Transactions on Robotics, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics is a highly regarded international journal in the field of mechatronics, co-sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). It is classified as a top-tier journal by Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Paper Link: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9940440