This paper shows how shear bands which are produced by slip, and are initially of the width of microbands in interstitial free (IF) steel, thicken to the order of 5-7 times the thickness of microbands. The process involves the operation of two shear bands shearing in opposite senses. The importance of this process is that it is capable of increasing the misorientation of the shear band material such that in principle, shear bands can provide nuclei for recrystallization. This reconciles the observation that sometimes shear band nucleation is observed, while in others, it does not happen.KEY WORDS: S-band; shear band; Schmid factor; IF steel; cold rolling.ISIJ International, Vol. 46 (2006), No. 10, pp. 1495No. 10, pp. -1499
ResultsOnly crystals belonging to the g fibre of the BCC rolling texture, which are heavily microbanded, are analysed in this paper. Figure 1 is a TEM micrograph from the longitudinal section (LS) showing developing instabilities in a microbanded grain. This structure has been described by the RISf group as S-bands 16) and the similarity between this micrograph and their micrographs derived from cold rolled Ni is striking. The transition from Area 1 to Area 2 is remarkable in that Area 1 shows clear curving of the microbands, but Area 2 shows narrow shear bands of about one microband in width. In other words, there seems to be a complete transition from the upper to the lower part of this single grain from early formation to mature narrow shear bands. Figure 2(a) is a magnified image of Area 1 and shows the curving of the microbands AЈ-AЉ, BЈ-BЉ and CЈ-CЉ to AЈ-A, BЈ-B and CЈ-C in the sheared region. The orientations of the sheared and un-sheared regions of the microbands were measured by Kikuchi patters obtained using TEM CBEDs, Figs. 2(b) and 2(c). The orientations of the microband AЈ-AЉ is (116, 148,120)[13,11, 1] and it is misoriented by small angle with neighboring microbands BЈ-BЉ and CЈ-CЉ. The orientation of the sheared segment A-AЈ is (16, 27,17)[4, 3, 1] and this is related to the matrix AЈ-AЉ by a 9.5°rotation. Figure 3(a) is an enlargement of Area 2 and reveals a relatively later stage of the development in the form of discrete shear bands of width 0.3 mm which now show no apparent link with the surrounding microbands, curvature unlike the S-bands of Area 1. The orientation of the shear band material is measured using the same method and is identical to the curving microbands seen in Fig. 2, but the lattice curvature is more localized. The region of intense curvature is parallel to the S-bands and the microbands surrounding them have identical orientations to the microbands surrounding the S-bands (the matrix orientation is (116, 148, 1 120)[13, 1 11, 1]). The orientation of the shear bands is (16, 30,21) [45,30,10] and this is misoriented by 9.8°with the matrix. These results support the idea that 'S-bands' are precursors to fully developed shear bands of one microband width.Shear bands having a different microstructure and of the thickness about 1-2 mm appeared in certain c...