Effect of temperature on texture formation of 6061 aluminum sheet in equal-channel angular pressing

A novel equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) procedure was conducted on 6061 aluminum sheet at temperature up to 513 K to investigate temperature effect on microstructure and texture formation. The deformed microstructures were examined by transmission electron microscopy and the macrotexture evolution was investigated by orientation distribution functions (ODFs). The results shown that when ECAP at temperature below 433 K the microstructures exhibit high dislocation density within subgrains with thick and waved non-equilibrium boundaries, and the textures are characterized by the formation of Rotated cube component or a pair of textures components near Rotated cube component, such as {0 3 1}〈5 1 3〉 and {0 1 3}〈5 1 3〉or {0 4 1}〈6 1 4〉 and {0 1 4}〈6 4 1〉. Whereas under certain procedure condition, i.e. at 513 K, the ECAP procedure is capable of producing microstructure with low density dislocations subgrains separated by regular boundaries, and a preferable 〈1 1 1〉//ND texture fiber is formed with the R-value as higher as 1.5. The texture results show that the ECAP procedure could be expected to be a potential application to enhance the formability of aluminum sheet.