Effects of induced shear deformation on microstructure and texture evolution in CP-Ti rolled sheets

Commercial pure titanium sheets were deformed by shear rolling at 400 °C with subsequent annealing to investigate microstructure and texture evolution along with its effects on the mechanical properties. A four sheet multilayer rolling scheme was used to isolate shear strains within the outer sheets, termed isolated shear rolling (ISR), thus allowing for direct comparison between shear strained material (outer sheets) and plane-strained material under similar conditions. Microstructure and texture evolution were investigated by electron backscatter diffraction analysis, while mechanical properties were evaluated through tensile testing aided by digital image correlation (DIC). Texture was seen to evolve from a ±30° transverse direction (TD) split basal texture to primarily basal texture (〈0001〉//Normal Direction) for the shear-strained sheets, in comparison with a slight rotation to a ±20° TD-split for the plane-strained sheets. After short-term annealing at 600 °C for 15 min, texture remained similar to that of the as-processed material yet at lower intensity levels. Compared to the base material, shear-rolled material showed much higher Lankford Coefficient values, with a significant boost attributed to shear deformation. The greater stretch formability is achieved in the shear-rolled material by rotation of the basal poles to become parallel to the sheet thickness. The results obtained here with ISR in regards to the effects of inducing higher shear strains on the rolled material are comparable to those reported in the literature by differential speed rolling (DSR).