Intensified texture of Zr702 sheet after slow cooling from near β-transus temperature

ABSTRACT

Microstructures and textures of a Zr702 sheet subjected to slow cooling (air cooling (AC) and furnace cooling (FC)) from a near β-transus temperature (980°C) were characterised by electron channelling contrast imaging and electron backscatter diffraction techniques. Results show that textural intensities of both the AC and the FC are markedly higher than that of the initial specimen and the FC specimen owns the strongest texture. After both the heat treatments, the initial bimodal basal textural features are retained with the recrystallisation textural component (0°, 30°, 30°) becoming dominant but the deformation textural component (0°, 30°, 0/60°) largely weakened. The textural intensification is attributed to strong variant selection during the β → α phase transformation and slow cooling-induced sufficient growth of residual prior α grains.

KEYWORDS:

• Zr sheet
• microstructure
• texture
• phase transformation
• variant selection
• misorientation
• electron channelling contrast imaging
• electron backscatter diffraction

Acknowledgements

Ms. Tingting Wang is acknowledged for providing assistance in post-processing EBSD data. The reviewers of this paper are also gratefully appreciated for their critical comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Linjiang Chai http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9750-6259

Ning Guo http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0462-1923

Additional information

Funding

This work is financially supported by the Fundamental and Cutting-Edge Research Plan of Chongqing [grant number cstc2018jcyjAX0299 and cstc2017jcyjAX0114], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51601165] and the fund of the State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing in NPU [grant number SKLSP201920].