Magnetostriction and Magnetostrictive Materials Magnetostriction and Magnetostrictive Materials Magnetostriction is the changing of a material's physical dimensions in response to changing its magnetization. In other words, a magnetostrictive material will change shape when it is subjected to a magnetic field.
Most ferromagnetic materials exhibit some measurable magnetostriction.
The highest room temperature magnetostriction of a pure element is that of Co which saturates at 60 microstrain. However, these materials have tremendous magnetic anisotropy which necessitates a very large magnetic field to drive the magnetostriction. For typical transducer and actuator applications, Terfenol-D is the most commonly used engineering magnetostrictive material. The mechanism of magnetostriction at an atomic level is relatively complex subject matter but on a macroscopic level may be segregated into two distinct processes. The first process is dominated by the migration of domain walls within the material in response to external magnetic fields.