Development of Non-destructive Evaluation System Using an HTS-SQUID Gradiometer with an External Pickup Coil

We are developing a new eddy-current non-destructive evaluation (NDE) system using a high-temperature superconducting quantum interference device (HTS-SQUID) gradiometer with the aim of applying it to power plants. Electric power facilities such as ducts and vessels are generally untransportable because of their size, and thus it is difficult to apply a conventional SQUID NDE system. The new NDE system employs an external Cu pickup coil which is supposed to be driven flexibly by a robot arm at room temperature and an HTS-SQUID chip which is placed in a magnetically shielded vessel. In the present research, we investigated the performance of an HTS-SQUID sensor connected with external pickup coils before mounting them to a robot arm. By varying the Cu coil conditions such as their sizes, the number of turns, and the diameter of wire, we qualitatively evaluated the frequency dependence of the effective area and the cutoff frequency.