Quantitative analysis of grain subdivision in cold rolled aluminium

A procedure is proposed for a statistical characterisation of deformed micr ostructures from the data collected using Orientation Imaging Microscopy (O IM). This procedure has been applied for a characterisation of 352 grains i n commercial purity aluminium cold-rolled to a reduction of 40%. The result s demonstrate the different behaviour of grains with different orientations : (i) grains having orientations near the {001}< 100 > and {025}< 100 > com ponents develop orientation gradients over distances of 10-20 mum; (ii) bra ins with orientations close to the {205}< 502 > component form fragments wi th relatively large misorientations, and (iii) grains within the beta -fibr e form fragments with relatively small misorientations. The experimental re sults are compared to previous observations by transmission electron micros copy (TEM) and good agreement is found. Finally, possible applications of t he present observations for advanced texture modelling are discussed. (C) 2 001 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights rese rved.