Texture control in non-oriented electrical steels by severe plastic deformation

Although plenty of research has already been carried out on the issue of texture control in non-oriented electrical steels, there is not yet a universally applied industrial process to obtain an optimized {001} fibre texture. Among the various laboratory processes that have been studied so far, cross rolling seems to be one of the most promising approaches. For evident reasons cross-rolling cannot be implemented on a conventional continuous rolling line of an industrial plant. In the present study a potential interesting alternative is presented which may deliver a similar texture evolution as the cross rolling process, but can be applied in a continuous line of hot and cold rolling operations followed by recrystallization annealing. By applying severe rolling reductions a very strong rotated cube texture is obtained very much similar to the one that is observed after cross rolling. After annealing, the rotated cube texture changes to a {h11} fibre texture with a maximum on the {311} component which implies the potential to develop a {001} fibre texture after further processing. It is argued that the appearance of the {311} recrystallization texture component can be attributed to oriented nucleation in the vicinity of grain boundaries between slightly misoriented rotated cube grains