Effect of Hot and Cold Rolling on Grain Size and Texture in Fe-Si Strips with Si-Content Larger than 2 wt%

The crystallographic texture and grain size have a strong influence on the magnetic properties of Fe Si alloys. These microstructural parameters are determined by the thermomechanical processing of the material. Here, some recent results on Fe Si-alloys with variable Si-content and without phase transformation are presented. Hot rolling conditions were varied in broad interval of parameters and afterwards, the samples were cold rolled and annealed. After the different processing steps, the samples were characterized by optical microscopy, X-ray diffraction and Electron Back Scatter Diffraction (EBSD) in order to evaluate the texture, grain size and the homogeneity of the structure through the thickness. This allowed to study the evolution of the intensity of the favourable magnetic texture components during processing.