Eddyfi Technologies ECT Probe for Small Tube Inspection

Heat exchangers are used to heat and cool various fluids across a wide range of industrial sectors. This is particularly important for the power generation and petrochemical industries, where equipment reliability is of utmost importance. Standard ECT bobbin probes often struggle to detect circumferential cracks, posing challenges in many cases, but the DefHi probe offered by Eddyfi Technologies can identify various complex shapes inside heat exchanger tubes, allowing for the accurate detection of small circumferential cracks in the tube sheet, sizing, and evaluation of characteristics. Additionally, the inspection speed is eight times faster compared to rotating probes. The DefHi probe is less affected by changes in speed, making it usable regardless of the presence of a mechanical probe feeding device.

Currently, seamless welded tubes are commonly used in capacitors. These tubes are prone to defects along the weld seam, such as axial cracks, blowholes, poor fusion, and inadequate melting. These defects make it difficult to achieve accurate sizing and classification assessments with standard eddy current bobbin probes. The reason is that the bobbin coil provides an average response over 360°, and the proportion of the weld defects relative to the entire tube wall being inspected by the probe is very small. To address this issue, Eddyfi Technologies has developed the "DefHi Probe," an eddy current array probe that uses multiplexing.