The impact of stress on changes in magnetisation is one of the most complex issues of magnetism. Magnetic methods make use of the impact of stress on permeability, hysteresis and magnetic Barkhausen noise, which are examined with fields with a high strength and a small frequency. The paper presents an analysis of the impact of residual stress resulting from inhomogeneous plastic deformations in the notch area of the examined samples on the changes in the strength of the residual magnetic field (RMF). The RMF on the surface of the component is the superposition of the simultaneous effect of the shape, the anisotropic magnetic properties of the material, as well as of the values of the components of a weak external magnetic field (most commonly—the magnetic field of the Earth). Distributions of the RMF components were measured on the surface of samples with a various degree of plastic strain. The finite element method was used to model residual stress in the samples. The impact of residual stress on changes in the residual magnetic field was shown. A qualitative correlation was found between places with residual stress and areas with increased values of the gradients of the RMF components. Further research is now in progress in order to develop the quantitative relationships.

Measurements are carried out of the Barkhausen noise (BN) and hardness on specimens where changes in hardness were obtained due to strain hardening (S235 and DC01 steels) and due to thermochemical treatment (AMS 6414 steel). A method is presented of processing the recorded BN signal to extract diagnostic information. The BN number of events is selected as the signal characteristic property to develop relevant correlations. A new methodology is presented for the development of correlations between the Barkhausen noise number of events and hardness. A possibility is indicated of developing correlations with a high R2 determination coefficient. The method limitations are specified.