Barkhausen Noise Analysis as an Alternative Method to Online Monitoring of Milling Surfaces

Surface parameters, such as microhardness, roughness, and microstructure, are used for quality control of a machining process. Given the fact that it is usually necessary to move the piece from the job zone to the quality control center to verify these parameters, the use of a portable quality control system could reduce the checking time of the process. The aim of this paper is to obtain the correlation of the typical machining process effect in the material surface with the Barkhausen noise to promote the online monitoring of the milling process. The Barkhausen noise is normally used to verify some magnetic properties of the ferromagnetic material and can be obtained using a simple procedure. The cutting temperature, surface roughness, microstructure, and, consequently, the Barkhausen noise can be modified by means of the cutting parameters variation. All these values depend on the level of residual stresses in the material. This paper presents an alternative to monitoring the milling surfaces of steel AISI SAE 1020 using the magnetic Barkhausen noise analysis.