ABSTRACT In this paper, in order to meet the engineering requirements of mechanical properties detection of materials with low power consumption, a novel incremental permeability detection system based on permanent magnet excitation is proposed to reduce system power consumption. Initially, a new incremental permeability sensor was designed to extract magnetic incremental permeability (MIP) signal. Through finite element simulation, experimental parameters were optimised, and a rational arrangement of double permanent magnets was devised to furnish an optimally strong AC bias field intensity. Subsequently, a practical detection platform was assembled to extract electromagnetic signal features. From the perspective of domain wall displacement, a characteristic value θ was proposed to predict the yield strength, with experimental results yielding a relative error of less than ±10%. These experiments have validated the capability of permanent magnet-type MIP to enable quantitative detection of the yield strength in ferromagnetic materials.