Deformation and recrystallization of hexagonal metals: modeling and experimental results for zinc

A polycrystal approach that divides the grains into small cells and accounts for local interactions in a self consistent way is used to calculate deformation and texture evolution of hexagonal zinc. As this model incorporates local effects, it predicts intragranular deformation and gives a description of the deformed microstructure in terms of misorientation between elements and variation in stored energy. This provides information which can be used as a basis for simulating recrystallization processes. The grains are composed of parallelepipedic cells, and a Monte Carlo algorithm is used for simulating static recrystallization. Nucleation and boundary mobility depend on the misorientation between cells and on the local variation in stored energy. The model is applied to simulate the kinetics of static recrystallization and the associated change in crystallographic texture in zinc polycrystals. Experimental results obtained by deforming zinc in plane strain compression compare well with the predictions and are consistent with a mechanism where nucleation occurring in highly deformed domains controls the recrystallization kinetic.