The application of stress cycling to 1% manganese steel at low magnetic fields causes an irreversible shift in the magnetization towards the anhysteretic due to domain walls breaking away from their pinning sites under stress. The change in flux density ΔB caused by a single stress cycle of fixed amplitude

has been found to be proportional to the difference between the initial flux density B
iand the anhysteretic flux density B
anat the same field, H. The change in flux density as a function of stress has been found to be approximately proportional to σ.