This volume contains selected papers from the 20th International Workshop on Electromagnetic Non-Destructive Evaluation (ENDE) held at Katahira Sakura Hall, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, from September 21–23, 2015. The first ENDE Workshop was held in London, UK exactly 20 years ago, beginning September 21st, 1995. The following 18 workshops were held in various countries around the world including the UK, Japan, France, USA, Hungary, Germany, South Korea, Poland, India, Brazil, Slovakia, and China. ENDE Workshops aim to provide an international forum for discussion on the state of art and perspectives in the field of electromagnetic non-destructive methods from the view of science, technology and their applications in engineering, which has contributed to the development of non-destructive testing and evaluation techniques using electromagnetic fields.

The 20th ENDE (ENDE2015) was organized by the ENDE2015 Organizing Committee, and co-organized by the School of Engineering, Tohoku University, the Institute of Fluid Science, Tohoku University, and the Japan Society of Maintenology. ENDE2015 was sponsored by the Intelligent Cosmos Research Institute, Sendai Tourism, Convention and International Association, and The Kajima Foundation.

There were 108 participants, including 33 students and 12 accompanying persons. The participants were from 17 countries: China, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Republic of China, the Slovak Republic, Thailand, the UK, and the USA. There were 82 contributions, including two keynote lectures and one invited lecture, 33 presentations over seven oral sessions, 26 presentations in the poster session, and 20 presentations in a special ‘Student Session’. The Student Session consisted of short oral presentations without Q&A and subsequent poster presentations. The presentations in the Student Session were evaluated by the participants. One student from Germany and three students from Japan were awarded the ‘ENDE ISC Award’ and ‘ENDE2015 Award’, respectively. Forty full papers were ultimately accepted and included in this volume.

As this is the commemorative twentieth workshop, several special sessions were arranged within the theme of ‘Origin, Legacy, and Future Directions of ENDE’. The workshop started with a keynote lecture by Professor Kenzo Miya, the founding father of ENDE Workshops, titled ‘Why we established ENDE Workshops 20 years ago’. The keynote lecture was followed by an invited lecture, ‘History and development of ENDE Workshops’, by Professor Toshiyuki Takagi. The second day of the workshop included a keynote lecture by Professor Gerd Dobmann titled ‘Global trend of ENDE studies’ to review the development of the study of electromagnetic non-destructive evaluations in the last couple of decades. The recent trends of the studies were then discussed in a subsequent panel session titled ‘ET&ENDE – Where we are and where we want to go?’ where three distinguished professors, Professor Antonello Tamburrino, Professor Gui Yui Tian, and Professor Lalita Udpa, were invited as panelists. On the last day of the workshop before the closing ceremony, another panel session was organized, inviting ENDE ISC members to discuss the future directions of ENDE Workshops. The panelists of the session were Professor Zhenmao Chen, the chairman of ENDE ISC, Professor Toshiyuki Takagi, Dr. Christophe Reboud, and Dr. Noritaka Yusa, who facilitated the discussion.

In addition to these special sessions, special events such as the pre-workshop meeting and farewell party were organized for the students. We believe that ENDE Workshops should promote friendships, especially between young researchers. It is our great pleasure if these friendships continue after this workshop.

ENDE2015 Organizing Committee would like to express sincere gratitude to all the members of the international standing committee members, participants, and the sponsors for their contributions. It was our great pleasure to hold ENDE2015 in Sendai where the huge earthquake and the resultant tsunami hit during an earlier ENDE Workshop. We deeply appreciate support from all over the world.

Noritaka Yusa

Tetsuya Uchimoto

Hiroaki Kikuchi

Editors