Grain growth in AZ31 alloy after uniaxial compression

The grain growth morphology, kinetics and texture change after uniaxial compression at 430 °C of an extruded AZ31 alloy were studied. The samples were loaded following two routes insuring two initial textures of the samples with compression direction parallel and normal to the extrusion direction. For both initial textures, a stable grain size is attained upon isothermal annealing and the grain growth kinetics can be described by: dn = dnR + kt with an n value of around 15. The annealing texture with grown grains is a retained hot deformation texture without emerging or strengthening other components. Abnormal grain growth is not observed for annealing time up to 10 000 h at 450 °C.