Quantifying texture evolution during hot rolling of magnesium Twin Roll Cast strip

Multi-pass rolling experiments with an AZ31 Twin Roll Cast (TRC) alloy were performed on an industrial scaled four-high rolling mill. During rolling with an intermediate annealing the evolution of texture and microstructure was investigated. To quantify the extent of preferred crystallographic orientation experimental X-ray pole figures were measured after different process steps and analyzed using the free and open Matlab (R) toolbox ninEx for texture analysis. The evolution of both the fiber texture and the microstructure was observed and analyzed in dependence on rolling conditions. In the initial state the specimen exhibits a texture composed of a weak basal texture and a cast texture with (0001)-planes oriented across the rolling direction. During the following rolling process a fiber texture evolved. The expected strength increment of the fiber texture was quantitatively confirmed in terms of volume portions of the orientation density function around the fiber and in terms of the canonical parameters of fitted pseudo Bingham distributions. Based on these results a model to predict the texture evolution during the strip rolling of magnesium in the examined parameter range was developed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.