Magneto-optical imaging characteristics of weld defects under alternating magnetic field excitation

This paper examines the characteristics of magneto-optical images of weld defects under alternating magnetic field excitation. Weld defects such as non-penetration, surface cracks and sub-surface cracks were detected by a magneto-optical imaging method. Magneto-optical imaging nondestructive testing experiments under alternating magnetic field excitation were carried out to detect the weld defects. Image processing methods which include contrast enhancement of original image, fused image, contrast enhancement of fused image were applied to extract the defect information of the magneto-optical images. What's more, the difference among the magneto-optical images of weld defects was obtained by contrast analysis. Experimental results show that non-penetration welding images possess significant differences in brightness and darkness, and this difference in cracks is smaller than non-penetrating ones. Under the same excitation conditions, the leakage flux of welds with non-penetration is stronger than that of weld cracks.