A Steel Wire Stress Measuring Sensor Based on the Static Magnetization by Permanent Magnets

A new stress measuring sensor is proposed to evaluate the axial stress in steel wires. Without using excitation and induction coils, the sensor mainly consists of a static magnetization unit made of permanent magnets and a magnetic field measurement unit containing Hall element arrays. Firstly, the principle is illustrated in detail. Under the excitation of the magnetization unit, a spatially varying magnetized region in the steel wire is utilized as the measurement region. Radial and axial magnetic flux densities at different lift-offs in this region are measured by the measurement unit to calculate the differential permeability curve and magnetization curve. Feature parameters extracted from the curves are used to evaluate the axial stress. Secondly, the special stress sensor for Φ5 and Φ7 steel wires is developed accordingly. At last, the performance of the sensor is tested experimentally. Experimental results show that the sensor can measure the magnetization curve accurately with the error in the range of ±6%. Furthermore, the obtained differential permeability at working points 1200 A/m and 10000 A/m change almost linearly with the stress in steel wires, the goodness of linear fits are all higher than 0.987. Thus, the proposed steel wire stress measuring sensor is feasible.