FluxCrawler

As a result of the Franco-German collaboration project “FilameNDT“, the battery-buffered magnetic flux leakage inspection platform “FluxCrawler” for inspection of steel wire ropes in single-sided access was developed at Fraunhofer IZFP. The platform is applicable for wire ropes with diameters between 3-4 cm and 20 cm. The system is controlled by a PC via long-range Bluetooth connection and scans the wire in a cylindrical pattern by moving once around the wire rope while moving a preset distance along the length of the cable. The inspection software generates a visualization of the magnetic leakage field covering the entire cable surface. Because of the caterpillar-like motion, slippage is no problem for the exact retrieval of striking positions.

As elements absorbing tensile stress, guy wires in construction engineering are applied in highly varying shapes (diameter, surface structure, coating) and bunching. Inspection systems that request the complete enclosure of the perimeter are but applicable in very restricted situations and only in a limited diameter range. Additionally they are unable to exactly localize the angle position of a defect.

Unlike other existing inspection systems, FluxCrawler adheres at the wire rope by magnetic attraction without any need for encompassing the whole cable perimeter.