Accelerated grain growth behavior during cyclic annealing

Accelerated grain growth has been observed during the cyclic annealing of cold rolled steel samples. In addition, several other observations, such as increase in grain size with cycle frequency and increase in grain size with increase in thermal amplitude were made in this study. These observations cannot be explained on the basis of isothermal grain growth kinetics as they do not capture non-isothermal effects such as heating rate and temperature reversal effects imposed during cyclic annealing. These anomalies have been ascribed to the enhanced mobility of the grain boundaries owing to extra excitation available during thermal cycling, which reduces the effective activation energy for grain growth.