Experimental trials on the detection of reinforcement breaks with the magnetic flux leakage method

The magnetic flux leakage method is used to detect failures in ferromagnetic materials since over 80th years and now this method is going to be applied in detecting reinforcement breaks of concrete specimens. After a short introduction including the state-of-the-art and the physical principles of the magnetism and, in particular, the leakage method, the paper presents the on-going research. Investigations on the detection of breaks in predefined reinforcement layouts as well as measurements on a large-scale experiment are described. Explanations about the first trials on displaying the measured data are also given. The paper concludes with an outlook of the future work that achieves the development of a guidance system which is necessary for an automatic measurement system.