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Abstract: In ultrasonic non-destructive tests, the echo signal at the flaw is highly complex due to the interference of multiple echoes with random amplitudes and phases, and is disturbed by all kinds of noises, such as thermal noise, digitalization noise, and structure noise. In this paper, the ultrasonic signal was decomposed by empirical mode decomposition (EMD) to obtain the intrinsic mode function (IMF) components according to ultrasonic defect echo signals occuring at the corresponding time, and the energy of the ultrasonic signal was concentrated. The IMF component selection criterion based on sub-band energy extraction was proposed to extract the ultrasonic signal component accurately and automatically from IMF components. When the selected IMF components were filtered by a band pass filter, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was enhanced greatly.

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