An integral computational model for crack simulation and detection via eddy currents

In this paper an innovative technique is described to solve the electromagnetic problem in the presence of a cracked conductor. Both the direct problem (given the crack, compute the scattered field) and the inverse problem (given the external measurements, obtain the crack position and shape) are dealt with. The features of an integral formulation in terms of a two-component electric vector potential expanded over edge elements are fully exploited. The resulting method proves to be extremely efficient, also thanks to the binary nature of the unknown. In this paper we restrict our attention to a class of problems, namely the eddy current testing for thin cracks in non-magnetic metallic plates, but the method can be extended to more general cases. (C) 1999 Academic Press.