Abstract: Giant magnetostrictive material (GMM) is a new functional material which has reversible dual-directional transduction effect (magnetic to mechanical and mechanical to magnetic). If the sensing signals based on inverse magnetostriction could be attained in the driving process of giant magnetostrictive actuators (GMA), the self-sensing actuator would be realized. The origin mechanism of magnetostrictive converse effect is discussed. An experimental method to test the converse effect in the GMA is built up. The influence of pre-stress, bias magnet and drive forces frequency to the converse effect in GMA is disclosed. The inverse effect changes weaken while increasing pre-stress, and appropriate bias magnet can enhance the inverse effect observably. The sensitivity of force sensing signal is improving with the increasing of vibration force s frequency, but the relationship is not ordinary linear. Experiments validated that GMA could be used as force sensor, and a self-sensing GMA based on time-sharing theory is pointed out.

Key words: Converse effect, Magnetostrictive, Self-sensing