Correlation between Martensitic Phase Transformation and Magnetic Barkhausen Noise of AISI 304 Steel

The movement of magnetic domain walls can be disturbed by material defects, also named pinning sites. When the magnetic field is changing, the domain walls move by “jumps” over these pinning sites. These jumps produce the so named magnetic Barkhausen noise (MBN). During walls movements also low amplitude and high frequency elastic waves are generated, they are called magnetic acoustic emission (MAE). Both MBN and MAE are technological and efficient alternatives of low cost in the study of ferromagnetic materials which suffer degradation by plastic deformation, presence of inclusions, different stresses configurations, etc., depending on their micro structural characteristics. For austenitic metastable stainless steel (no magnetic), plastic deformation induces martensitic phase transformation (ferromagnetic). The aim of this work is to correlate the MBN with the plastic deformation and martensitic phase transformation of AISI 304 stainless steel. Standard test samples were submitted to uniaxial tensile strength with different load schedules up to rupture. At every instant the MBN produced was registered. Then MBN was correlated with the steel microstructure when the martensitic phase was growing.