The crystal lattice rotations induced by shear bands formation have been examined in order to investigate the influence of grain boundaries on slip propagation and the resulting texture evolution. The issue was analysed on Al-0.23wt.%Zr alloy as a representative of face centered cubic metals with medium-to-high stacking fault energy. After solidification, the microstructure of the alloy was composed of flat, twin-oriented, large grains. The samples were cut-off from the as-cast ingot in such a way that the twinning planes were situated almost parallel to the compression plane. The samples were then deformed at 77K in channel-die up to strains of 0.69. To correlate the substructure with the slip patterns, the deformed specimens were examined by SEM equipped with a field emission gun and electron backscattered diffraction facilities.
Microtexture measurements showed that strictly defined crystal lattice re-orientations occurred in the sample volumes situated within the area of the broad macroscopic shear bands (MSB), although the grains initially had quite different crystallographic orientations. Independently of the grain orientation, their crystal lattice rotated in such a way that one of the f111g slip planes became nearly parallel to the plane of maximum shear. This facilitates the slip propagation across the grain boundaries along the shear direction without any visible variation in the slip plane. A natural consequence of this rotation is the formation of specific MSB microtextures which facilitates slip propagation across grain boundaries.
Nonuniversal structure of point defects in face-centered cubic metals
