Effects of original orientation combination on substructure characteristics during continuous dynamic recrystallization in an extruded Al-Cu-Li alloy

•The flow stress of the Al-Cu-Li alloy is influenced by the original orientation combination.•The original orientation combination affects the deformation restriction between grains.•A novel deformation restriction factor γ′ has been proposed.•The difference in deformation restriction leads to the different substructure characteristics.

The deformation behavior of a material is closely related to its preferred orientations. Usually, material contains more than one preferred orientation, and the combination of different preferred orientations makes the deformation behavior more complicated. In this study, the effects of orientation combination on the deformation substructure characteristics of an extruded Al-Cu-Li alloy were investigated. Isothermal compression tests of Al-Cu-Li samples with different orientation combinations were conducted to study the flow stress behavior. The microstructure of the deformed samples was examined and analyzed by electron backscatter diffraction. A novel deformation restriction factor γ′  has been proposed to compare the deformation restriction of different orientation combinations. It was found that compared with the sample which contains 〈001〉&〈101〉 orientation combination, the sample containing 〈001〉&〈111〉 orientation combination possesses higher subgrain misorientation and finer grain size because of the larger deformation restriction between 〈001〉&〈101〉 orientated grains. The present work shows that it is feasible to control the continuous dynamic recrystallization microstructure of the Al-Cu-Li alloy by adjusting the original orientation combination.

Graphical AbstractDownload high-res image (255KB)Download full-size image