Influence of rate of change of magnetization processes on sensitivity of magnetic adaptive testing

The rate of change of magnetizing field (field-slope), applied for the nondestructive method of magnetic adaptive testing, influences both signal-to-noise ratio and sensitivity of the chosen magnetic parameters with respect to the investigated degradation of the ferromagnetic material (degradation functions). Dependence of the degradation functions sensitivity on the field-slope is analyzed in this paper. It is shown that whereas sensitivity of the top-responsive degradation functions from around the top permeability of the nondegraded (reference) material drops down with increasing field-slope, sensitivity of the mild-responsive degradation functions from regions with lower permeability of the reference material is frequently field-slope-independent. The most favorable choice of the best degradation functions and of the proper magnetizing field-slope remains to be a question of optimum adaptation of the tests both to the investigated material and to the applied measuring technique.