Recovery during annealing in a cold rolled low carbon steel. Part I: Kinetics and microstructural characterization

Abstract A cold rolled low carbon steel has been annealed at low temperatures (300–500 °C) in order to promote recovery without interaction with recrystallization. It has been shown that the recovery process can be monitored by means of non-destructive magnetic techniques using coercive field (Hc) measurements. Transmission electron microscopy and electron backscattering diffraction (EBSD) observations were carried out in order to investigate the microstructural changes associated with the measured decrease in Hc produced by the recovery. The EBSD image quality maps show that on a microstructural scale, the cold work stored energy is distributed heterogeneously among different texture components, in agreement with previous studies. Recovery mainly affects the {1 1 1} γ-fibre orientations, leading to the formation of well defined subgrains.