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Advanced Sensors for Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation
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Advanced Sensors for Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Fault Diagnosis & Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027 | Viewed by 1255

Editors

Prof. Dr. Marco Laracca

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Electrical and Energy Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00184 Rome, Italy
Interests: non-destructive testing via eddy current; sensor design; realization and characterization; wearable devices; impedance, power, and energy measurement in sinusoidal and non-sinusoidal condition; non-contact current measurement; power quality; calibration of vehicle speed meters
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Federico Carere

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Information Science and Technology, Telematic University Pegaso, 80143 Naples, Italy
Interests: distributed measurement systems for modern electric grids; non-destructive testing based on eddy-current techniques; sensor realization and characterization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Alessandro Sardellitti

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Engineering and Science, Universitas Mercatorum, Piazza Mattei 10, 00186 Rome, Italy
Interests: non-destructive testing; eddy current testing; electromagnetic engineering; instrumentation; sensors; signal processing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Non-destructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) plays a crucial role in a wide range of industrial and scientific fields, ensuring the integrity, safety, and reliability of materials, components, and structures throughout their lifecycle.

Ongoing research and technological innovation in NDT&E are therefore of strategic importance, particularly with regard to enhancing inspection accuracy, reducing testing costs, and enabling faster, more reliable, and more automated evaluation procedures. Recent advances in sensor technologies, measurement systems and data-driven methodologies are creating new possibilities for characterizing and monitoring complex materials and structures, even under challenging operating conditions.

This Special Issue aims to promote state-of-the-art developments in advanced sensors, transducers, and measurement techniques for NDT&E. Contributions addressing novel sensing principles, experimental methodologies, signal processing approaches, and integrated NDT&E systems are particularly encouraged. Applications may span multiple fields, including, but not limited, to automotive, aerospace, nuclear, petrochemical, civil infrastructure, archaeology, and cultural heritage.

Dr. Marco Laracca
Dr. Federico Carere
Dr. Alessandro Sardellitti
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sensors and transducers for nondestructive testing and evaluation
  • advanced measurement techniques for NDT&E
  • smart and multifunctional sensors for NDT applications
  • design, optimization, and characterization of NDT instruments and devices
  • signal processing and data analysis techniques for NDT&E
  • reliability, accuracy, and uncertainty assessment in nondestructive testing
  • novel methodologies for damage detection and material characterization
  • methods and devices for enhancing the performance of existing NDT techniques

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 4743 KB  
Article
A Dual-Polarized Narrow-Beam Antenna for Microwave Interrogation of Back-Surface Flaws in Polyethylene Slabs
by Ruonan Wang, Yong Li, Wenbin Ren, Pingjie Wang, Yang Fang and Zhenmao Chen
Sensors 2026, 26(14), 4361; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26144361 - 9 Jul 2026
Abstract
In view of the advantage of cross-polarized inspection (CrPI) in microwave nondestructive testing (MNT), in this paper a dual-polarized narrow-beam antenna as the pivotal reflectometric sensor is systematically designed and realized particularly for enhancement of detection and imaging of subsurface defects in dielectric [...] Read more.
In view of the advantage of cross-polarized inspection (CrPI) in microwave nondestructive testing (MNT), in this paper a dual-polarized narrow-beam antenna as the pivotal reflectometric sensor is systematically designed and realized particularly for enhancement of detection and imaging of subsurface defects in dielectric structures. The antenna is equipped with a compact asymmetric waveguide orthomode transducer, with Teflon used as the internal filling material, in an effort to reduce its size and narrow the beamwidth. The internal dimensions of the realized dual-polarized narrow-beam antenna are optimized via numerical simulations. Based on the optimal design parameters, the antenna is fabricated and assessed through experiments. The experimental results reveal that the fabricated antenna has better metric indicators in terms of a return loss better than 10 dB, isolation better than 40 dB in 30.0 GHz~36.0 GHz and half-power beamwidths below 36.9° at 36.0 GHz. In order to further affirm the applicability of the fabricated antenna for CrPI, an MNT system is established to perform two-dimensional scanning and imaging of back-surface volumetric defects in polyethylene specimens. Based on the image characteristics of CrPI, a flaw-recovery algorithm is proposed to retrieve the defect opening profile. The averaged contrast-to-noise ratio of the processed CrPI-based image is found to be approximately five times larger than that of the raw CrPI-based image and fourteen times bigger than that of the raw CoPI-based image. Experimental results have further indicated that the fabricated antenna is feasible for not only co-polarized inspection (CoPI) but for CrPI, which exhibits higher testing sensitivity and defect-image contrast than CoPI. In conjunction with the flaw-recovery algorithm, by utilizing the dual-polarized narrow-beam antenna with the better metric indicators for CrPI, the image quality of the back-surface flaws in polyethylene slabs can be effectively improved. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Sensors for Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation)
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21 pages, 4518 KB  
Article
Performance Characterization of Radar-Based Delamination Assessment in Glass Fiber Reinforced Composites
by Manuel E. Rao, Vittorio Memmolo, Jochen Moll and Peter Kraemer
Sensors 2026, 26(11), 3510; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26113510 - 2 Jun 2026
Viewed by 314
Abstract
Radar technology in the microwave and millimeter-wave frequency range is the subject of current research for structural health monitoring of composite materials, e.g., damage detection in wind turbine blades. Performance assessment, enabling widespread practical application of this promising and non-contact sensing approach, can [...] Read more.
Radar technology in the microwave and millimeter-wave frequency range is the subject of current research for structural health monitoring of composite materials, e.g., damage detection in wind turbine blades. Performance assessment, enabling widespread practical application of this promising and non-contact sensing approach, can be realized via probability of detection (POD) theory, which is a statistical method for determining the detectability of damage through response metrics as a function of flaw size. This paper deals with the experimental investigation of a delamination model represented by two parallel glass fiber reinforced polymer plates separated from each other from 0mm to 1mm in steps of 0.01mm. Experimental studies with a frequency modulated continuous wave radar are performed under laboratory conditions in the frequency range from 57GHz to 65GHz. The signal response is represented by two damage indicators (DIs), according to the root mean square deviation and Mahalanobis distance. Since the reflection of electromagnetic waves exhibits a nonlinear behavior, this also implies a nonlinear response in the DI characteristic. The novelties in this work are the successful implementation of a nonlinear regression model, combined with an optimal threshold decision through receiver operating characteristic curves for a high-resolution POD representation. The POD with 95% confidence bounds indicates the flaw size at which the delamination can be detected reliably. Depending on the radar distance in experimental studies, the binary structural condition (damaged or undamaged) was correctly assessed from 95% to 100%. The minimum detectable size ranges from 0.01mm to 0.08mm. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Sensors for Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation)
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21 pages, 2656 KB  
Article
Evaluation Method for Creep Damage of P92 Steel Based on Magnetic Barkhausen Noise and Magnetoacoustic Emission
by Ziyi Huang, Wuliang Yin, Xiaochu Pang, Xinnan Zheng, Xufei Liu and Lisha Peng
Sensors 2026, 26(6), 1909; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26061909 - 18 Mar 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 467
Abstract
The application of ultra-supercritical power plant boilers is becoming increasingly widespread. P92 steel, as a typical material used for boiler main steam pipes, plays a critical role in unit safety, making the detection of its creep damage highly significant. However, existing conventional non-destructive [...] Read more.
The application of ultra-supercritical power plant boilers is becoming increasingly widespread. P92 steel, as a typical material used for boiler main steam pipes, plays a critical role in unit safety, making the detection of its creep damage highly significant. However, existing conventional non-destructive testing methods are difficult to effectively detect creep damage. To address this issue, a magnetoacoustic emission (MAE)–magnetic Barkhausen noise (MBN) composite measurement system is developed, which is adapted to 20 Hz and 0.3 A sine wave excitation to trigger the synchronous pickup of MBN and MAE signals of P92 steel. After collecting signals with different creep life ratios (0%~100%) under working conditions of 650 °C and 100 MPa, time-domain (absolute mean, peak value, etc.) and frequency-domain (bandwidth) features are extracted. In response to the non-monotonicity between the magnetoacoustic features and the creep damage grade, principal component analysis (PCA) is introduced to reduce dimensionality. Different creep levels of samples in the two-dimensional principal component space are presented as clear gradient clustering, achieving the accurate differentiation of creep stages. Research has shown that the MAE-MBN composite system combined with PCA can effectively characterize the creep damage of P92 steel, providing a novel non-destructive detection path for the in-service life assessment of power plant components. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Sensors for Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation)
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