Effects of Cold Rolling Reduction and Annealing Temperature on Microstructure and Texture Evolution of Cu-44%Ni Alloy

The effects of cold rolling reduction and annealing temperatures on the formation of cube texture and microstructural evolution have been investigated in Cu-44%Ni alloy. The results show that the recrystallized cube texture is strengthened by either increasing the rolling reduction or increasing the annealing temperature. And the strong cube texture can be observed for the severely cold-rolled (>90%) alloy after annealing at high temperature (>900 °C). Furthermore, high-angle grain boundaries (HAGBs) and annealing twin boundaries (Σ3 boundaries) decrease with the increase of rolling reduction. However, during isochronal annealing, the trend of Σ3 boundaries is consistent with that of HAGBs, which firstly increases during recrystallization process and then decreases with further increasing temperature. After annealing at 1100 °C for 1 h, the 99% cold-rolled Cu-44%Ni alloy obtains the fraction of the cube texture 99.8%, and the fractions of HAGBs and Σ3 boundaries are 2.5% and 1.3%, respectively.