Texture-Differentiated Grain Growth in Silicon Steel: Experiments and Modeling

Grain growth for various texture components in silicon steel was investigated via experiments and modeling. It was found that the clustered spatial arrangement of grains with specific orientations significantly altered the local environment for grain growth and consequently resulted in texture-differentiated grain size distribution (GSD) evolution. A novel local-field model was proposed to describe grain growth driven by continuous changing orientation and size distribution of adjacent grains. The modelling results show that the texture-differentiated grain growth in microstructure with grain clusters can produce a GSD with increased proportion in small-sized range and large-sized range by more than two-times, accompanied with an evident change in area fractions of various texture components. The effect of clustered spatial arrangement on grain growth can be precisely predicted, which is valuable to design and control the texture-differentiated GSD as well as the global GSD.