Comparison of Magnetic Barkhausen Noise Tetrapole and Dipole Probe Designs

P. R. Underhill [1], T. W. Krause [1],
[1] Department of Physics, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, ON, Canada
Published in 2015

COMSOL Multiphysics® software is used to understand the difference in behaviour of two Magnetic Barkhausen Noise (MBN) probes. The dipole probe has to be physically rotated to sample the angular distribution of the MBN. The tetrapole probe uses vector superposition to rotate the magnetic field without probe motion. Using the AC/DC Module and non-isotropic material properties, it was found that, while the field direction and intensity of the two probes are very similar in the region of interest (center of the probe), the field intensity gradients are very different. It is believed that the interaction of these gradients and the magnetic field are responsible for the differences in the MBN behaviour of the probes