An omnidirectional shear-horizontal guided wave EMAT for a metallic plate

We propose a new electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) for generation and measurement of omnidirectional shear-horizontal (SH) guided waves in metallic plates. The proposed EMAT requires a magnetic circuit configuration that allows omnidirectional SH wave transduction. It consists of a pair of ring-type permanent magnets that supply static magnetic fluxes and a specially wound coil that induces eddy currents. The Lorentz force acting along the circumferential direction is induced by the vertical static magnetic flux and the radial eddy current in a plate, resulting in omnidirectional SH wave generation. To maximize the transducer output at given excitation frequencies, optimal EMAT configurations are determined by numerical simulations and validated by experiments. The omnidirectivity of the proposed EMAT is also confirmed by the simulations and experiments.