Shear horizontal (SH) ultrasonic waves are useful in the non-destructive evaluation field. They can be generated, in metallic media, by electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMAT) that use an array of periodic permanent magnets (PPM). PPM EMATs, in their conventional form, generate forward and backward traveling SH waves. This feature is generally undesired. Recently, a side-shifted dual-PPM EMAT has been proposed. This device generates waves predominantly in a single direction. However, its radiation pattern reveals backward side lobes. This thesis aims to improve the aforementioned design through its construction parameters, more specifically, the number of rows of magnets in the PPM array and the lateral separation between them. An analytical model, based on the line source method, which considers the wires projections as independent wave sources, was developed to calculate the ultrasonic field generated by PPM EMATs, either for the conventional one or the dual-PPM EMAT. Exploiting the developed model, it was possible to compute the theoretical radiation pattern of the device in order to better analyse how its construction parameters affect its unidirectionality. Three different coil technologies were used, namely hand-wound coils and coils made with flexible printed circuit boards (PCBs), either of polyamide or polyester material. The magnet arrays were mounted on 3D-printed molds to ensure their positioning. Experimental tests were carried out where the fabricated device was placed onto a 1.5 mm-thick aluminum plate, and a commercial PPM EMAT was used as a receiver, at different reception angles, in order to calculate the radiation pattern of the dual-PPM EMAT. Overall, 44 units, combining all coil technologies, were manufactured with lateral separation from 1 mm to 4 mm and 1 to 4 rows of magnets per PPM. Experiments and theoretical results presented good agreement. It was observed that either increasing the number of rows of magnets or decreasing their lateral separation reduced the intensity of the backward side lobes. When using the configuration of 4 rows of magnets and 1 mm side shift, fabricated with polyamide PCBs, results revealed that the intensity of the backward side lobes was reduced by 8.6 dB, when compared with the original configuration. Regarding the coil technologies, it can be concluded that the use of flexible PCBs allowed one to obtain shorter lateral separations between rows of magnets and simplified the fabrication process of the dual-EMAT. Mainly, the poliamide-based flexible PCB coil presented low average error between experimental and simulated measurements and the easiest fabrication process among all three coil technologies tested.