The stress testing and evaluation of ferromagnetic materials that are widely applied in engineering has always been a focus of, and presented difficulties for, non-destructive testing. As there is still no effective method for detecting the stress of ferromagnetic materials, this paper
puts forward the idea of applying the magnetic anisotropy method based on the inverse magnetostriction effect in stress testing of ferromagnetic materials. According to the principle of the magnetic anisotropy method, this paper discusses the development of Mn-Zn ferrite probes of three different
structures, the construction of a magnetic anisotropy testing system comprising an excitation system, a signal collecting system and a signal processing system and the way in which a testing experiment was conducted on a 16MnR steel plate specimen under different conditions of stress, frequency
and excitation voltage. All three types of probe can effectively determine the stress location of the specimen and present different phenomena and characteristics of the test. According to the experiment, significant correlation is seen between the stress and the magnetic signal, which provides
a new idea for stress testing of ferromagnetic materials.