The purpose of this paper is to provide a new methodology for the characterization of a defect by eddy‐current testing (ECT). The defect is embedded in a conductive non‐magnetic plate and the measured data are the impedance variation of an air‐cored probe coil scanning above the top of the plate.
The inverse problem of defect characterization is solved by an iterative global optimization process. The strategy of the iterations is the kriging‐based expected improvement (EI) global optimization algorithm. The forward problem is solved numerically, using a volume integral approach.
The proposed method seems to be efficient in the light of the presented numerical results. Further investigation and comparison to other methods are still needed.
This is believed to be the first time when the EI algorithm has been used to solve an inverse problem related to the ECT.
