Electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) have been widely applied in nondestructive testings and structural health monitoring. This paper proposes a flexible surface wave electromagnetic acoustic transducer (FSW-EMAT), which uses flexible rubber magnets instead of hard permanent magnets, in order to achieve the defects detection of steel pipe or other ferromagnetic structures with a certain surface curvature. Traditional EMATs mainly consist of three parts: magnet, coil and metal specimen to be tested. Permanent magnets or electromagnets are generally used to produce the strong magnetic flux density. However, the two kinds of magnets are not suitable for the defect detection of metal specimens with a certain curvature. The proposed FSW-EMAT in this paper adopts a flexible magnet, which is a mixture of rubber and iron powder and has strong flexibility to fit the bent specimen. The proposed FSW-EMAT can be easily applied in the testing of curved structural component and detect axial and circumferential defects by rotating the transducer.
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