Metadynamic recrystallization and microstructure evolution of a continuously cast Ti-microalloyed steel slab with heavy reduction

The effects of the deformation parameters in the heavy reduction (HR) process on recrystallization kinetics and microstructure evolution were analyzed. Based on the experimental results, metadynamic recrystallization (MDRX) kinetic and austenite grain size models were established for a continuously cast slab during HR. Moreover, the evolution of the quenched microstructure after MDRX was observed using electron backscatter diffraction. The relative frequency of very low-angle grain boundaries decreased from 58.8% to 52.1%, and the relative frequency of high-angle grain boundaries increased from 28.5% to 38.9%. Analyses revealed that the recovery was the main softening mechanism. The decrease in the total grain boundary length indicated that subgrain growth occurred with increasing inter-pass time. The main texture evolved from a {001}<110> texture to a {112}<111> texture, and the texture strength remained unchanged.