The evolution of texture in an equal channel pressed aluminum AA1050 A.M. Kliauga a,n , R.E. Bolmaro b , M Ferrante a a Departmento de Engenharia de Materiais, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Rod. Washington Luis km 235, 13565-905 São Carlos, SP, Brazil b Instituto de Física Rosario-Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Ingeniería y Agrimensura CONICET-UNR, Bv. 27 de Febrero 210 bis, S2000EZP Rosario, Argentina article info Article history: Received 11 August 2014 Received in revised form 21 October 2014 Accepted 27 October 2014 Available online 6 November 2014 Keywords: AA1050 aluminum ECAP Texture Annealing abstract The aim of this work was to analyze the evolution of texture of an aluminium AA1050 processed by ECAP and further recrystallization in search of optimum processing conditions to improve formability. The initial material was processed by two different routes: the first set of samples came from a hot rolled coil with a mixture of cube, copper and brass textures and the second from roll casting, exhibiting a strong brass texture. The ECAP deformation followed routes A (no sample rotation between passes), Ay (no sample rotation between passes but keeping the normal to rolling direction parallel to the transverse extrusion axis) and Bc (with a 90 o sample rotation around the extrusion axis between passes). Texture evaluation was performed by x-ray analysis and results were analyzed by regular texture and orientation distribution function calculations. The normal and planar anisotropy were measured for the deformed and annealed samples. ECAP orientations were generated mostly by rotation around the transverse axis. 〈111〉//ND; orientations can be generated from S, Goss or copper textures but not from brass or cube textures. Therefore route A and starting with the hot rolled or rolled textures should be considered if 〈111〉//ND orientations are desired. Using route Bc, rotating the existing orientations into a favorable position can generate the desired fiber. The strength of a texture after ECAP depends on the orientations of the initial texture, however the correlation starts vanishing after various ECAP steps and the texture finally smoothes out. When 〈111〉//ND was more intense there was an improvement in the planar anisotropy. & 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) has been successfully employed to produce ultrafine-grained materials through severe plastic deformation (SPD). The technique uses two square or circular die channels intersecting at a given angle θ, usually equal to 901 or 120 o . At the intersection the material undergoes simple shear deformation to an extent that depends on θ. As the process can be repeated many times, it induces extensive plastic deforma- tion and thereby significantly changes the microstructure and texture of the sheet [1]. It has been observed that shear deforma- tion can produce strong 〈111〉// Normal Direction (ND) texture [2] an essential feature for good formability of fcc materials [3]. This has a potential application for aluminum alloys because the 〈111〉// ND texture cannot be obtained by conventional rolling and annealing processes. Thus, processes in which shear is the main deformation mode, such as ECAP [4], its variation known as differential equal-channel pressing (DECAP) [5,6] and asymmetric rolling [7], have been recently applied to Al alloys in order to study the influence of shear deformation on their formability. However, not all crystallographic orientations are transformed to 〈111〉//ND by applying shear deformation; the resulting texture is very influenced by the initial texture and, thus, this method alone is not sufficient for enhancing the sheet formability. Han et al. [6,8] observed that the {001}〈110〉 texture component originated from the {123}〈634〉 S texture, while the 〈111〉//ND texture components originated from the {112}〈111〉 Cu and {110}〈100〉 Goss texture when simple shear was applied. Finally, Skrotzki et al. [9] and Cui et al. [10] observed that for strong initial cube texture, achieved after annealing a rolled sheet material, the shear deformation yielded rotated cube texture through route A, which was stable and did not improve formability. The initial texture and deformation route can thus considerably affect the material properties. The aim of this work was to analyze the evolution of texture of an AA1050 alloy after ECAP and further recrystallization, applying various processing routes to two different initial textures. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/msea Materials Science & Engineering A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2014.10.073 0921-5093/& 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. Tel: þ55 16 33518571. E-mail addresses: kliauga@ufscar.br (A.M. Kliauga), bolmaro@ifir-conicet.gov.ar (R.E. Bolmaro), ferrante@ufscar.br (M. Ferrante). Materials Science & Engineering A 623 (2015) 22–31