Earing Control and Deformation Processing of Aluminium Alloys

The production of ear free aluminium flat rolled products highly depends on the ability to balance the deformation and recrystallization textures at the final gauge. A model based on the concept of earing diagram is proposed, which enables the process-texture-earing relationships to be assessed in a fairly simple way. It is shown that such a predictive tool can be used for the definition of optimized fabrication schedules leading to ear free material. Such earing control is achieved by a control of both the microstructural evolution as well as the position of the recrystallization steps along the complete fabrication sequence.