An Impingement – Spheroidisation Theory for Nucleation and Grain Growth

Abstract

In an investigation of nucleation of recrystallisation in an Interstitial Free steel it was found that new crystals were almost always contained within the rolled-out hot band grain envelopes and were mostly equiaxed. At a later stage they grew and had an aspect ratio of 2:1 but at the completion of recrystallisation were again equiaxed. This is explained by the notion that nucleation occurs relatively frequently in certain grains, that these nuclei have very similar orientations and are thus orientation pinned within the solute and precipitate containing envelopes of the hot band grains. Provided the misorientation is small the impinged group are capable of spheroidisation provided the driving force across the pinned boundary is sufficient to overcome the pinning, because, by definition, this pinned boundary is of high angle character. The theory, as it is presented as coalescence, relies on a form of Östwald ripening and therefore provides a possible explanation of why grain growth kinetics obeys a time exponent of between 1/2 and 1/3. A similar observation of high aspect ratio grains has been made many times in the case of cold rolled copper which forms cube texture. Again, nuclei are formed in the cube bands, but these are prevented from lengthening because of orientation pinning. However, when the length of a group of such impinged nuclei is sufficient, spheroidisation will produce equiaxed grains.