Analysis of wavelength deviation of guided waves with electromagnetic acoustic transducers

It is usually considered that the wavelength of guided waves propagating in plates is equal to the double spacing interval of the meander-line coil of electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs). However, the actual value of the wavelength might deviate from the double spacing. This paper takes Shear Horizontal (SH) waves for instance to study the relationship between the wavelength deviation and the parameters of EMATs. It is shown that the wavelength deviation occurs when the operating point of EMATs does not locate on the dispersion curves of a certain SH mode. A wavelength measurement method is proposed to evaluate the deviation by the time-frequency analysis of detected wave signals. Experiments are set up to study the phenomenon of wavelength deviation and verify the validity of the proposed method.