Shear Banding in Rotated Goss Grains and its Effect on the Formation of Cube Texture in Non-Oriented Electrical Steel

Abstract

Cube texture ({001}<100>) is a desired final texture in non-oriented electrical steel sheets used as magnetic cores because it contains two easy <100> axes in the sheet plane, which is beneficial to the magnetic properties. However, the cube texture is very difficult to form in non-oriented electrical steels through conventional rolling and annealing. It has been shown that after conventional rolling, the deformed <111>//ND (normal direction) grains provided nucleation sites for the unfavourable <111>//ND texture during recrystallization, leading to a final <111>//ND texture. To eliminate the <111>//ND texture and promote the {001}<100> texture, an uncommon rolling process, i.e. inclined rolling, was adopted in this study. By rotating the hot rolling direction by 60° around the ND, an uncommon initial texture, the rotated Goss ({110}<110>), was intentionally generated. This was intended to change the orientation flow during plastic deformation, and suppress the formation of the conventional <111>//ND texture in the deformed microstructure. Plane-strain compression (rolling) of the rotated Goss grains produced shear bands within these grains due to their large Taylor factor. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) characterization of the shear bands illustrated that, crystallites with the cube orientation were formed within these shear bands. During recrystallization, the shear bands provided preferential nucleation sites, and the cube crystallites preferentially nucleate within the shear bands. These cube crystals can then grow into the deformed matrix, and lead to the formation of a strong cube texture in the final annealed steel sheets.