Crack identification system on MOH cold rolled grain oriented sheets: Application of K-fold cross validated BRANN

Abstract

To increase efficiency of transformers, iron (hysteresis and Fuko losses), copper and abnormal losses must be prevented. Hysteresis loss may be significantly reduced by adding silicon to iron, and Fuko loss may be significantly reduced by using cold-rolled grain-oriented steel (CRGO) in the form of thin sheets with high resistance. To reduce abnormal losses, it is necessary not to use CRGO with ferromagnetic features including cracks in the core sequence. In line with this, currently, the magnetic flux leakage (MFL) method is commonly used to research cracks in ferromagnetic materials. Generally, literature studies researched the variation characteristics of MFL signals collected with magnetic sensors and size of amplitude values according to the physical properties (crack width, crack depth, etc.) of the crack in the ferromagnetic material. Different to the literature, our primary aim in this study is to determine this variation according to the type and geometric features of an artificial full crack with known physical properties created in MOH CRGO steel. The secondary aim of our study is to develop an artificial neural network predicting the type and geometric features of a full crack with unknown geometric features using the data obtained. In line with this, our study first produced an MFL measurement system. Then, artificial full crack samples were prepared with different types and geometric features using MOH CRGO steel. These artificial full crack samples were magnetized by being placed in the core of an electromagnet with 50 kHz AC signal and the surface of the material was scanned in a single dimension with a location-controlled fluxgate sensor. Harmonics of signals obtained from the fluxgate sensor were investigated with DSP lock-in amplifier and the amplitude values for the harmonics with greatest variation were uploaded to the computer. Finally, 3 different Bayesian regularized artificial neural networks (BRANN) were developed and trained using the harmonic amplitude values for full crack samples with known geometric features and used to predict the type and geometric features of full cracks with unknown geometric features. The first of these BRANN was used to identify the fixed or variable width of the full crack type, while the others were used to find the geometric features according to the full crack type. For the BRANNs trained with the K-fold cross-validation method, accuracy degrees of R = 0.99934, R = 0.99999 and R = 0.91654 were obtained, respectively. The trained BRANNs provided results compatible with reality for artificial full crack models with unknown crack type and geometric properties.