• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.17-24
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• 2023

A post-processing technique for the measurement signal of a solenoid-type sensor is introduced. The solenoid-type sensor nondestructively evaluates an external tendon of prestressed concrete using the total flux leakage (TFL) method. The TFL solenoid sensor consists of primary and secondary coils. AC electricity, with the shape of a sinusoidal function, is input in the primary coil. The signal proportional to the differential of the input is induced in the secondary coil. Because the amplitude of the induced signal is proportional to the cross-sectional area of the tendon, sectional loss of the tendon caused by ruptures or corrosion can be identified by the induced signal. Therefore, it is important to extract amplitude information from the measurement signal of the TFL sensor. Previously, the amplitude was extracted using local maxima, which is the simplest way to obtain amplitude information. However, because the sampling rate is dramatically decreased by amplitude extraction using the local maxima, the previous method places many restrictions on the direction of TFL sensor development, such as applying additional signal processing and/or artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the proposed method uses amplitude demodulation to obtain the signal amplitude from the TFL sensor, and the sampling rate of the amplitude information is same to the raw TFL sensor data. The proposed method using amplitude demodulation provides ample freedom for development by eliminating restrictions on the first coil input frequency of the TFL sensor and the speed of applying the sensor to external tension. It also maintains a high measurement sampling rate, providing advantages for utilizing additional signal processing or artificial intelligence. The proposed method was validated through experiments, and the advantages were verified through comparison with the previous method. For example, in this study the amplitudes extracted by amplitude demodulation provided a sampling rate 100 times greater than those of the previous method. There may be differences depending on the given situation and specific equipment settings; however, in most cases, extracting amplitude information using amplitude demodulation yields more satisfactory results than previous methods.