Micro-mechanism of evolution of microstructure and texture in Ni-Fe alloys

A comprehensive investigation was carried out to explore the micro-mechanisms associated with the evolution of deformation microstructure and texture in Ni-Fe alloys during rolling. X-ray diffraction, electron back-scatter diffraction (EBSD) and Mössbauer spectroscopy as well as simulation methods involving crystal plasticity and molecular dynamics simulations were used to explore the mechanism of evolution. Pure Ni, Ni20wt.%Fe and Ni40wt.%Fe were rolled to true strain 3.0, following two different strain paths. Unidirectionally rolled Ni20wt.%Fe and Ni40wt.%Fe alloys show copper type texture, similar to that of pure Ni. By contrast, the cross rolled samples show the development of α-fibre along with A {110}<111> and cube {100}<001> orientations. Both Ni20Fe and Ni40Fe exhibit extensive shear banding in UDR as well as CR conditions, unlike pure Ni, which has been attributed to the appearance of two short-range ordered phases, Ni3Fe and NiFe. In case of UDR, the nature of shear banding is different in Ni20Fe and Ni40Fe alloys, while after CR both the alloys show similar microstructures displaying higher fraction of shear banding compared to UDR. Simulation results have indicated that larger number of slip systems are activated in case of CR compared to the UDR samples that leads to the formation of a weaker texture in the former. Some strain free grains have been observed near the shear banded regions, indicating that an extended recovery mechanism could be operative in Ni20Fe and Ni40Fe. This phenomenon was more pronounced when the fraction of shear bands was more.