Effect of deformation mode and grain orientation on misorientation development in a body-centered cubic steel

Strain-induced misorientation development was studied in an IF steel as a function of strain for two deformation modes, plane strain compression and simple shear. Using electron back-scattered diffraction, orientation maps of "large" areas were obtained, from which several individual grains associated with the principal texture components could be extracted so that only intragranular misorientations could be estimated for these orientations. It was observed that the increase of the misorientation angle was more prominent in simple shear than in plane strain compression and that the orientation influence was different for each mode. Considering texture evolution as a possible source of misorientation development, the lattice spin tensor was estimated with the Taylor model for the two deformation modes; both reorientation axis and angle were compared with misorientation angle and axis. The striking concordance of both quantities allows us to conclude that there is a direct contribution of texture evolution to misorientation accumulation with strain. (C) 2007 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.