Influence of primary annealing condition on texture development in grain oriented electrical steels

The development of texture and microstructure in two kinds of conventional grain oriented electrical steels, which were annealed at different primary annealing temperature, were investigated. The specimens were anlayzed using Orientation Distribution Function (ODF), optical microscopy and OIM (Orientation Imaging Microscopy). The size distributions of AlN precipitates, which were used as grain growth inhibitors, were investigated using transmission electron microscope (TEM) and an image analyzer. The influence of primary annealing conditions on the secondary recrystallization in conventional grain oriented electrical steels was discussed based on information on precipitate distributions and the kinetics of abnormal grain growth of Goss grains. When the high energy boundary theory and the driving force for the Goss grain growth are considered, it is possible to explain the reason for significant improvement of the final texture and magnetic properties in the specimen that was recovered before the final annealing compared to the specimen that was recrystallized. (C) 2002 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.