Generation of omni-directional shear-horizontal waves in a ferromagnetic plate by a magnetostrictive patch transducer

• Waves are generated by a magnetostrictive patch transducer in a ferromagnetic plate.
• The generated waves are omni-directional shear-horizontal (SH) guided waves.
• The magnetic leakage issues seriously affecting wave transduction are investigated.
• A method to properly configure the transducer is proposed to address the issues.
• The proposed method is validated through numerical simulations and experiments.

It this study, omni-directional shear-horizontal wave transduction is performed using a specially configured magnetostrictive patch transducer in a ferromagnetic plate. For a ferromagnetic plate, unavoidable magnetic flux leakage into the plate not only results in poor transduction efficiency but also generates unwanted waves within the plate. These problems must be overcome to inspect ferromagnetic plates using the transducer. Therefore, we investigate the reasons for the poor performance and propose a method to improve its performance. The effectiveness of the proposed method was validated through simulations and experiments.