Microstructural Coarsening during Annealing of Cold Rolled Aluminum

The microstructural evolution during annealing below the recrystallization temperature of a commercial purity aluminum (99wt.% purity) cold rolled to a true strain of 2 has been investigated by transmission electron microscopy concentrating on microstructural and orientational aspects. The deformation microstructure was a typical lamellar structure with extended lamellar boundaries, GNBs (geometrical necessary boundaries), and short interconnecting boundaries, IDBs (incidental dislocation boundaries). The microstructure was divided into regions representing typical rolling texture orientations and regions of other orientations. During annealing the structure coarsened towards an equiaxed structure and it was observed that this coarsening was significantly slower in regions of rolling texture orientations than in regions of other orientations. This difference was discussed based on the characteristics of the deformation structure.