Effect of grain refinement by severe plastic deformation on the next-neighbor misorientation distribution

Abstract Next-neighbor misorientation distributions (NNMD) in severely deformed polycrystalline materials are commonly measured by orientation imaging. A procedure is proposed which enables the separation of NNMD of ultrafine-grained materials into two parts: the distribution of misorientations between newly emerged grains within the original (“parent”) grain interior (“internal daughter grains”) and the distribution of misorientations between grains adjacent to an original grain boundary on its opposite sides (“grain boundary daughter grains”). The procedure is based on electron backscatter diffraction orientation map analyses carried out on different planes of deformed samples considering the evolution of the grain size and shape during severe plastic deformation. It was applied to copper processed by up to three passes of equal-channel angular pressing. A characteristic feature of the measured NNMD is the occurrence of a double peak, which is clearly due to the differences between the NNMD of the two distinct populations of new grains defined above. The peak at low angles represents mainly the continual grain subdivision process in the interior of a parent grain (and is associated with internal daughter grains), while the peak at large angles is due to the high angle misorientations of the grain boundary daughter grains.