The evolution of the grain structures in AA2195 Al-Li alloy plate warm-rolled by 80% reduction during recrystallization annealing at 500 ℃ was investigated by electron backscatter diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. It is found that the elongated grain structures are caused by the lamellar distribution of recrystallization nucleation sites, being lack of large second phase particles (>1 μm), and dispersive coherent particles (such as δ′ and β′) concentrated in planar bands. The recrystallization process may be separated into three stages: firstly, recrystallization nucleation occurs heterogeneously, and the nuclei are concentrated in some planar zones parallel to rolling plane. Secondly, the grain boundaries interacted with small particles concentrate in planar bands, which is able to result in the elongated grain structures. The rate of the grain growth is controlled by the dissolution of these small particles. Thirdly, after most of small particles are dissolved, their hindrance to migration of the grain boundaries fades away, and the unrecrystallized zones are consumed by adjacent recrystallized grains. The migration of high angle grain boundaries along normal direction leads a gradual transformation from the elongated grains to the nearly equiaxed, which is driven by the tension of the grain boundaries.
A rate dependent crystal plasticity constitutive model considering self and latent hardening in finite element analysis was developed to simulate rolling textures of pure aluminum. By changing the assignment of orientations to finite elements, i.e. assigning the same set of orientations to all elements or different orientations to different elements, the influences of grain interaction on the formation of rolling textures were numerically simulated with this kind of crystal plasticity finite element model. The simulation results reveal that the grains without considering grain interaction rotate faster than those considering grain interaction, and the rotation of grain boundary is slowed down due to the grain interaction. For a good simulation more elements should be assigned to one grain, in which the effects of both the boundary and interior parts of grain contribute to the formation of rolling textures.
