An Integrated Model of Magnetic Hysteresis, the Magnetomechanical Effect, and the Barkhausen Effect

This article reviews the ferromagnetic hysteresis, magnetomechanical, and Barkhausen properties of magnetic materials and presents an integrated model to describe these effects and the underlying mechanisms that cause these effects. Hysteretic properties of ferromagnets, such as permeability, coercivity, remanence, and hysteresis loss are known to be sensitive to external factors including applied stress, temperature, and heat treatment, and internal factors like residual strain, microstructure, grain size, and anisotropy and the presence of precipitates of a second phase, such as iron carbide in steels. It thus becomes imperative to characterize the effect of these factors on the hysteresis parameters. Currently, several models such as Preisach, Stoner-Wohlfarth, and Jiles-Atherton are used to describe the magnetic hysteresis of ferromagnetic materials. We review here the quasistatic Jiles-Atherton hysteresis model which describes hysteresis in terms of domain wall motion enabling a connection to be made to the physical response of the magnetic material. This model has been extended to include the magnetomechanical effect and the Barkhausen effect in ferromagnetic materials. Theoretical work presented here provides a conceptual framework linking together these magnetic property measurements with model parameters and to the structure of the material.