The influence of deformation texture on nucleation and growth of cube grains in aluminium

Abstract

The influence of deformation texture on the initial stages of recrystallization of deformed pure Al single crystals and commercial AA1050 alloy were characterized. To precisely quantify the orientation relationship between nuclei and simple deformation structures, single crystalline samples of stable Br(110) [1-1-2] and semi-stable S’(234) [20-28 11] orientations, were plane strain compressed (PSC) to 40% to develop a dominant homogeneous microstructure composed of two sets of microbands. The samples were then lightly annealed to reach the initial stage of primary recrystallization. The results on single crystals were related to the behaviour of the polycrystalline samples in state after hot-rolling then PSC to the same degree and lightly annealed. SEM/EBSD analyses of single crystalline samples demonstrate that the orientations of recrystallized grains are limited to a certain number of orientation groups. However, the orientations of the as-deformed state are not retained in the orientations of new grains. Deformed samples with Br orientation do not show the formation of cube grains during recrystallization, whereas strong nucleation of cube-oriented grains is observed in homogeneously and heterogeneously deformed areas in the semi-stable S’ orientation, despite the cube-oriented nuclei not present in the as-deformed structure. The recrystallization texture components of the AA1050 alloy were related to the standard β-fibre texture formed during the previous cold deformation. Cube grains formed intensively in PSC polycrystalline samples, primarily in association with as-deformed areas with near four variants of S(124) [21-1] and S’ orientations and were characterized by local misorientations around the <111> axes.