Quantitative analysis of grain subdivision in cold rolled aluminium

A procedure is proposed for a statistical characterisation of deformed microstructures from the data collected using Orientation Imaging Microscopy (OIM). This procedure has been applied for a characterisation of 352 grains in commercial purity aluminium cold-rolled to a reduction of 40%. The results demonstrate the different behaviour of grains with different orientations: (i) grains having orientations near the {001}< 100 > and {025}< 100 > components develop orientation gradients over distances of 10-20 mum; (ii) brains with orientations close to the {205}< 502 > component form fragments with relatively large misorientations, and (iii) grains within the beta -fibre form fragments with relatively small misorientations. The experimental results are compared to previous observations by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and good agreement is found. Finally, possible applications of the present observations for advanced texture modelling are discussed. (C) 2001 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.