Industrial equipment can be exposed to various types of damage during their long exploitation in harsh environments which might lead to corrosion cracking. Typically, a hidden crack is very dangerous since it is difficult to be detected by Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) techniques. Moreover, the integrity requirements of metallic structures cannot be satisfied by simply detecting the existence of cracks. However, the quantitative description of the cracks is still an issue that should be solved. This paper introduces a new approach to estimate the dimensions of hidden cracks inside a stainless steel plate based on Shear Vertical (SV) waves generated by an Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducer (EMAT). The Finite Elements Method (FEM) has been used to model the acquired signal by EMAT. Then, the characterization of hidden cracks is carried out by combining two methods; Time-of-Flight (ToF) technique that has been used to evaluate the crack height, and the Partial Least Square Regression (PLSR) method that has been used to estimate the crack width. The obtained results demonstrate the efficiency and the reliability of the adopted approach concerning the quantitative evaluation of the crack dimensions.

中文翻译：

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使用剪切垂直波和 PLSR 技术检测和表征不锈钢材料内部的隐藏裂纹

工业设备在恶劣环境中长期使用期间可能会遭受各种类型的损坏，这可能会导致腐蚀开裂。通常，隐藏的裂缝非常危险，因为它很难被无损检测 (NDT) 技术检测到。此外，金属结构的完整性要求不能通过简单地检测裂纹的存在来满足。然而，裂缝的定量描述仍然是一个亟待解决的问题。本文介绍了一种基于电磁声换能器 (EMAT) 产生的垂直剪切 (SV) 波来估计不锈钢板内部隐藏裂纹尺寸的新方法。有限元法 (FEM) 已用于对 EMAT 采集的信号进行建模。然后，通过结合两种方法进行隐藏裂缝的表征；已用于评估裂纹高度的飞行时间 (ToF) 技术，以及已用于估计裂纹宽度的偏最小二乘回归 (PLSR) 方法。所获得的结果证明了所采用的方法在裂纹尺寸定量评估方面的效率和可靠性。