Application of Taguchi Method in Design of Surface Eddy Current Probes for Diagnostics of Power Equipment

Abstract

The article’s aim is to create a method of reducing the influence on the surface eddy current probes output signal of a number of interfering parameters without their elimination, to ensure its sta-bility, which is achieved as a result of computer search of design and operating values of probes Taguchi-parameters at the stage of their design. To achieve the goal the following tasks were carried out: software for calculating the output signal of surface probes, which is based on the electrodynamic model of the measurement process for the test object in the form of a conductive plate of infinite over-all dimensions and finite thickness; using the Taguchi method, a special design of experiments with the use of orthogonal arrays is constructed, the fulfillment of which makes it possible to determine the influence of each parameter and their complex nonlinear interaction on the output signal of the probe; by integrating the Taguchi method with computer numerical simulation, the optimal controllable pa-rameters of the probe were determined, minimizing the signal changes caused by noise factors. The most important research result is the method creation of providing the signals probes stability and re-ducing the influence of noise parameters on them simultaneously without their elimination. The meth-od effectiveness is demonstrated on the example of designing a thickness gauge, which allowed com-puter search for a set of its optimal parameters to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio, thereby reducing the signal variability. The significance of the obtained results lies in the creation of theoretical and practical approaches to the design of surface eddy current probes with new properties of interfering factors suppression, which provide the best conditions for reliable diagnostics of power equipment objects.