Assessment of partially conductive cracks from eddy current non-destructive testing signals using support vector machine

Abstract

This paper deals with a three-dimensional non-destructive evaluation of partially conductive cracks from eddy current testing signals. An SUS316L plate specimen containing a crack is non-destructively inspected by the eddy current method using numerical simulations. An extensive database of eddy current response signals is prepared while dimensional parameters of a crack together with its partial conductivity are varied in wide ranges. A Support Vector Machine classification algorithm is employed to solve the electromagnetic inverse problem. The acquired signals are employed for training the algorithm and for testing its performance. It is demonstrated that the Support Vector Machine algorithm is able to properly classify detected defects into proper classes with very high probability even the partial conductivity of a detected crack together with its width are unknown.