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High-strength bolts are crucial load-bearing components of wind turbine towers. They are highly susceptible to fatigue cracks over long-term service and require timely detection. However, due to the structural complexity and hidden nature of the cracks in wind turbine tower bolts, the small size of the cracks, and their variable propagation directions, detection signals carrying crack information are often drowned out by dense thread signals. Existing non-destructive testing methods are unable to quickly and accurately characterize small cracks at the thread roots. Therefore, we propose an ultrasonic phased array element arrangement method based on the Fermat spiral array. This method can greatly increase the fill rate of the phased array with small element spacing while reducing the effects of grating and sidelobes, thereby achieving high-energy excitation and accurate imaging with the ultrasonic phased array. This has significant theoretical and engineering application value for ensuring the safe and reliable service of key wind turbine components and for promoting the technological development of the wind power industry.

This paper presents novel design techniques for the Fermat spiral, considering a maximum side lobe level (SLL) reduction. The array system based on a Fermat spiral configuration considers techniques based on uniform and non-uniform amplitude excitation. The cases of uniform amplitude excitation are the golden angle and the optimization of the angular separations. The cases of non-uniform amplitude excitations consider a raised cosine distribution and the optimization of the amplitude excitations through the Fermat spiral array. In this study, the method of genetic algorithms (GA) was used in the cases to find the values of the angular separations and the amplitude excitations of the Fermat spiral array. A performance evaluation was conducted for all these design cases, considering the Fermat spiral geometry. These design cases were validated using electromagnetic simulation to take mutual coupling into account and consider the effect of the antenna element pattern in each proposed design case.