An X-ray method for the determination of stored energies in texture components of deformed metals; application to cold worked ultra high purity iron

An X-ray method has been developed to evaluate the stored energy of cold work in different texture components of plastically deformed metals. The dislocation density and the outer cut-off radius of dislocations are obtained from Bragg peaks recorded from single texture components. The stored energy is approximated by the energy of dislocations, which is calculated according to the anisotropic theory of elasticity. As an example the method is applied to the case of two major texture components developed in cold rolled ultra high purity (UHP) iron. The stored energy of the {111}[112]-gamma fibre component of the 88% cold rolled UHP iron is about 3.6 times larger than that of the {001}[110]-alpha fibre component. The present results, of significantly higher accuracy than those of previous methods, are in good agreement with data obtained from microhardness and recent calorimetric measurements.