Influence of rolling ways on microstructure and anisotropy of AZ31 alloy sheet

Two rolling ways, unidirectional rolling and cross rolling, were carried out on twin roll cast AZ31 alloy sheet to study the influence of strain path change on the evolution of the rolling microstructure and texture as well as the anisotropic properties of AZ31 alloy sheet with microscopy, X-ray diffraction technique and tensile tests. It is found that cross rolling gives rise to more uniform microstructure and stronger texture intensities compared with unidirectional rolling. The differences in the microstructure and texture intensities are reflected in the anisotropy characterized by the difference in the yield stress and the fracture elongation that were measured along directions in the rolling plane at angles of 0°, 45° and 90° from the rolling direction.