Review of Residual Stress Measurement by Magnetic Barkhausen Noise Technique

Determination of residual stress state is important for quality, integrity, and service performance of the components and structures. Almost all manufacturing processes cause considerable amounts of residual stress; thus, any process or product design ignoring it involves a risk for distortion or early failure. Among the existing methods, the magnetic Barkhausen noise method has been gaining attention for measuring residual stresses nondestructively in ferromagnetic materials. It is sensitive to the interactions between the magnetic structure and microstructure or residual stress fields. So far, successful qualitative results have been obtained for monitoring the residual stress variations on the surfaces of the components manufactured by various processes. However, some challenging tasks exist, such as obtaining reliable quantitative results when residual stresses and microstructure change at the same time or extracting depth-specific information. This article reviews the studies for the measurement of residual stress by magnetic Barkhausen noise method, particularly focusing on the processes widely used in industry, namely shot peening and welding.