Texture Evolution by Strain-Induced Boundary Migration during Hot Deformation of Fe-3.0 wt.% Si Alloy: Experiment and Modeling

Texture and microstructure evolution during high-temperature plane-strain compression in Fe-3.0 wt.% Si alloy has been investigated by micro-texture analysis and modeling. In this study, hot deformation test is performed on the temperature range of 900 °C~1150 °C with a strain rate scope of 0.01 s−1~5 s−1, and the effect of deformation parameters is investigated by means of electron backscattered diffraction. Nucleation and growth assisted by strain-induced boundary migration result in strong {001}<110> and {001}<210> texture components with low Taylor factors, and the grain size of λ fiber increases significantly by consuming the {111}<110> and {111}<112> texture components with high Taylor factors. The critical Taylor factor above which nucleation by strain-induced boundary migration cannot occur, decreases continuously during hot deformation. With the decreasing critical Taylor factor, the increment rate of low-Taylor-factor orientation depends more sensitively on Taylor factor than the decrement rate of high-Taylor-factor orientation. The boundary separating enhanced and weakened orientations moves towards lower Taylor factor with the deformation proceeding, and medium-Taylor-factor texture components may experience a reversed change from enhancement to weakness. A quantitative model is proposed to describe texture development by incorporating the oriented nucleation probability dependent on a variable critical Taylor factor and the selective growth driven by a variable Taylor factor difference between adjacent grains. The present work can provide an efficient method for optimizing hot deformation texture by means of strain-induced boundary migration.