Evolution of texture at the initial stages of continuous annealing of cold rolled dual-phase steel: Effect of heating rate

The performance of cold rolled dual-phase (DP) steels depends on their microstructure, which results from the thermomechanical processing conditions, involving hot rolling, cold rolling and continuous annealing. In the present work, the effects of intercritical annealing parameters i.e. heating rate, soaking temperature and time and the cooling rate on the texture and microstructure of a cold rolled DP steel (0.08%C-1.91%Mn) were investigated after simulating through Gleeble thermomechanical simulator. The soaking temperature was chosen in a way that all the ferrite has recrystallized before the temperature was reached. The three different heating rates allowed the samples to get recrystallized in three different ways: below Ac-1, just around Ac-1 and above Ac-1. {3 3 2} fiber texture along with {112} (111) texture component were observed after heating to the soaking temperature as well as after slow cooling. The overall intensity of the texture as well as textural component was observed to be nearly independent of the heating rate as well as cooling rate. The textural evolution was correlated with the volume fractions and morphology of carbides, which depend on the annealing processing parameters. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.