Evolution of recrystallization texture in medium to low stacking fault energy alloys: Experiments and simulations

The present work aims to investigate the evolution of static recrystallization microstructure and texture in medium to low stacking fault energy (SFE) alloys. In these categories of materials, the process of recrystallization becomes complex because of the presence of extensive deformation heterogeneity. Ni-xCo (40 and 60wt.% Co) alloy has been chosen for this purpose, where Ni-40Co belongs to medium SFE, and Ni-60Co belongs to low SFE regimes. The effect of solid solution strengthening and deformed microstructural features on the mechanism of recrystallization are explored. Both the alloys were subjected to 50% cold-rolling reduction followed by isothermal annealing at 600 degrees C. Recrystallization texture of Ni-40Co shows a non-uniform alpha-fiber having a peak intensity at the Goss component, whereas Ni-60Co shows uniform alpha-fiber texture. Both the alloys also show rotated cube (Rt C) and rotated Cu (Rt Cu) components after recrystallization. Apart from that Ni-60Co exhibits brass recrystallization (BR) texture component. The differences in the recrystallization texture in both the Ni-Co alloys are attributed to the role of different heterogeneous deformation features in the microstructure and transition from Cu-type to Bs-type as-deformed texture. The recrystallization microstructure is dominated by the formation of substantial annealing twin (sigma 3) boundaries, which also produces many new orientations; thereby weaken the recrystallization texture. These experimental findings and the proposed mechanism were used as input to simulate the recrystallization microstructure and texture in the alloy using the parallelized cellular automata (CA) technique. Parallelized CA model has successfully predicted the evolution of recrystallization texture and microstructure through simulation except parallel annealing twin feature.