A texture-component Avrami model for predicting recrystallization textures, kinetics and grain size

Abstract

The study presents an analytical model for predicting crystallographic textures and the final grain size during primary static recrystallization of metals using texture components. The kinetics is formulated as a matrix variant of the Johnson–Mehl–Avrami–Kolmogorov equation. The matrix form is required since the kinetic and crystallographic evolution of the microstructure is described in terms of a limited set of growing (recrystallizing) and swept (deformed) texture components. The number of components required (5–10) defines the order of the matrix since the kinetic coupling occurs between all recrystallizing and all deformed components. Each such couple is characterized by corresponding values for the nucleation energy and grain boundary mobility. The values of these parameters can be obtained by analytical or numerical coarse graining according to a renormalization scheme which replaces many individual grains which grow via recrystallization in a deformed texture component by a single equivalent recrystallization texture component or by fitting to experimental data. Each deformed component is further characterized by an average stored deformation energy. Each element of the kinetic matrix, reflecting one of the possible couplings between a deformed and a recrystallizing texture component, is then derived in each time step by a set of two differential equations. The first equation describes the thermally activated nucleation and growth processes for the expanded (free) volume for a particular couple of a deformed and a recrystallizing texture component and the second equation is used for calculating the constrained (real) volume for that couple which corrects the free volume for those portions of the deformation component which were already swept. The new method is particularly developed for the fast and physically based process simulation of recrystallization textures with respect to processing. The present paper introduces the method and applies it to the primary recrystallization of low carbon steels.