Study of the Texture Formation during Strain Induced Boundary Migration in Electrical Steel Sheets

Texture formation through strain induced boundary migration (SIBM) was investigated. Temper rolling reduction before final annealing for SIBM was varied between 0 and 26% and grain sizes and textures were measured using EBSD. In the specimen which was temper rolled to 5%, in which grain growth by SIBM occurred most efficiently, a strong Goss component (which was a minor component after rolling), developed during annealing. From the EBSD image quality analysis, it was found that stored energy increased significantly in the Goss component with strain (from 5 to 9 %), whereas it was always relatively small in the D-Cube component ({001}), compared to Goss and g-fibre components. Based on these results, a mechanism of grain growth by SIBM was suggested. Texture evolution during annealing could thus be explained by the hypothesis, speculated from the analysis of orientation stability, that D-Cube grains are associated with more homogeneous dislocations distributions than Goss grains, in which the co-existence of high and low dislocation density zones could favour grain growth by SIBM.