Recovery, Recrystallization and Grain Growth

Abstract

Recrystallization has been identified as a process in metallic solids since the “old days” (last part of the nineteenth century), when it was supposed that cold working of a metallic workpiece destroyed its crystallinity and that subsequent heating restored the crystalline nature by a process then naturally coined with the name “recrystallization”. Nowadays we would define recrystallization as a process that leads to a change of the crystal orientation (distribution) for the whole polycrystalline specimen, in association with a release of the stored strain energy as could have been induced by preceding cold work: a new microstructure results (Fig. 10.1). Recrystallization restores the properties as they were before the cold deformation. Recrystallization (and recovery and grain growth) occurs in all types of crystalline materials, so not only in metals. However, metals are the only important class of materials capable of experiencing pronounced plastic deformation at relatively low temperatures (i.e. low with respect to the melting temperatures), which explains that most of the corresponding research has been and is performed on metallic materials.