Surface roughness is one of the main factors that affect the ultrasonic testing of micro-cracks. This article theoretically analyzes the relationship between the changes in the energy intensity of crack echo waves and roughness-modified transmission coefficients. A series of simulations are carried out using two-dimensional sinusoidal curves as rough surface. Then, parallel experiments are performed on sample surfaces with different arithmetic average heights (Ra). The signal amplitude ratio factor (SARF) is defined to assess the ultrasonic detection capacity for micro-cracks. Both finite element analysis and experimental results show that signal amplitude decreases with an increase in Ra, resulting in signal-to-noise ratio loss. Amplitude attenuation caused by the rough back surface is less than that caused by the rough front surface. It is difficult to identify the signal of micro-cracks with a depth less than 400 μm when the Ra of the front surface is larger than 15 μm. Cracks with depths of more than 200 μm can be distinguished when the back-surface roughness is less than 24 μm. Furthermore, the amplitude of the micro-crack signal increases slightly with variation in the horizontal parameter (Rsm). This study provides a valuable reference for the precision evaluation of micro-cracks using ultrasonic inspection.

Singular value decomposition (SVD) has been proven to be an effective de-noising tool for flaw echo signal feature detection in ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation (NDE). However, the uncertainty in the arbitrary manner of the selection of an effective singular value weakens the robustness of this technique. Improper selection of effective singular values will lead to bad performance of SVD de-noising. What is more, the computational complexity of SVD is too large for it to be applied in real-time applications. In this paper, to eliminate the uncertainty in SVD de-noising, a novel flaw indicator, named the maximum singular value indicator (MSI), based on short-time SVD (STSVD), is proposed for flaw feature detection from a measured signal in ultrasonic NDE. In this technique, the measured signal is first truncated into overlapping short-time data segments to put feature information of a transient flaw echo signal in local field, and then the MSI can be obtained from the SVD of each short-time data segment. Research shows that this indicator can clearly indicate the location of ultrasonic flaw signals, and the computational complexity of this STSVD-based indicator is significantly reduced with the algorithm proposed in this paper. Both simulation and experiments show that this technique is very efficient for real-time application in flaw detection from noisy data.

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Stress is one of the important factors that cause fatigue and fracture of ferromagnetic components, and its accurate measurement is of great significance to ensure the safety and reliability of components. Accordingly, a set of alternating magnetic field stress measurement system was designed and developed. The system includes a measurement sensor, DDS signal excitation module, signal conditioning module, signal acquisition, and processing module. The system was used to carry out uniaxial tensile testing of Q235 steel, and the influence of different testing parameters on the testing signal was studied. The research results show that: in the elastic stage, there is a good linear relationship between the real part of the detection signal and the tensile stress. This characteristic quantity can be used to evaluate the stress of ferromagnetic materials; In addition, the correlation coefficient and sensitivity of different detection parameters were compared through linear fitting analysis, and a set of best detection parameters were obtained. Under this parameter, the correlation coefficient reaches 0.991, and the sensitivity is 7.318 mV/kN. The above research provides test methods and techniques for ferromagnetic material stress measurement.

In order to illustrate influence of surface roughness on the energy change of excitation process in thickness measurement of electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT), the change of Lorentz force during the excitation process is analyzed theoretically. A finite element simulation model of EMAT is established with different surface roughness. The distribution of eddy current density and Lorentz force density of different rough surface is discussed. The results show that the eddy current density gets nonuniform due to the irregular profile of the surface. The average value of Lorentz force density decreases with the increase of surface roughness Ra, which makes the excitation energy of EMAT get weaker. Finally, the experiment results verify the analysis of the theory and finite element simulation.