Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducer

Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducer (EMAT) is a transducer for non-contact sound generation and reception using electromagnetic mechanisms. EMAT is an ultrasonic nondestructive testing (NDT) method which does not require contact or couplant, because the sound is directly generated within the material adjacent to the transducer. Due to this couplant-free feature, EMAT is particularly useful for automated inspection, and hot, cold, clean, or dry environments. EMAT is an ideal transducer to generate Shear Horizontal (SH) bulk wave mode, Surface Wave, Lamb waves and all sorts of other guided-wave modes in metallic and/or ferromagnetic materials. As an emerging ultrasonic testing (UT) technique, EMAT can be used for thickness measurement, flaw detection, and material property characterization. After decades of research and development, EMAT has found its applications in many industries such as primary metal manufacturing and processing, automotive, railroad, pipeline, boiler and pressure vessel industries.