Journal of Microscopy, Vol. 230, Pt 3 2008, pp.

414–423
Received 17 May 2007; accepted 24 July 2007

Texture evolution in grain-oriented electrical steel during hot

band annealing and cold rolling

S . M . S H I N , S . B I RO S C A , S . K . C H A N G & B . C . D E C O O M A N
Materials Design Laboratory, Graduate Institute of Ferrous Technology, Pohang University of Science
and Technology, Pohang 790-784, Korea

Key words. Annealing, EBSD, electrical steel, texture.

Summary direction. The production of GO steel is highly complicated and

The optimization of magnetic and physical properties of
electrical steel is imperative for many engineering applications.
The key factors to improve magnetic properties are the
steel composition as well as control of the crystallographic
orientation and microstructure of the steel during processing.
However, this requires careful control of processing at all stages
of production. Under certain conditions of deformation and
annealing, electrical steel can be produced to have favourable
texture components. For grain-oriented (GO) electrical steels
that are used in most transformer cores, a pronounced
{110}001 Goss texture plays a vital role to achieve low
power losses and high permeability. Essentially, Goss texture
develops during secondary re-crystallization in GO electrical
steels; however, the mechanism of the abnormal Goss grain
growth is still disputed in the literature. In the current study,
the influence of the annealing conditions on the development
of annealing, cold rolling and re-crystallization textures of hot-
rolled GO electrical steel were investigated in detail following
each processing step. Furthermore, the orientation data from
electron backscatter diffraction were used to evaluate the
orientation-dependent stored energy of deformed grains after
hot rolling. In the light of new findings in the present study,
annealing and deformation texture development mechanisms
were critically reviewed.
Introduction
Grain-oriented (GO) electrical steel is a soft magnetic material
that is mainly used as the core material in electrical
transformers that require high permeability and low power
losses. The magnetic properties of GO steel are characterized
by a pronounced {110}001 Goss texture, where the easiest
magnetization direction 001 is parallel to the magnetic field
Correspondence to: Soran Birosca. Tel: 00 44 (O) 161 306 8959; fax: 00 44 (O) 161
306 3586; e-mail: soron.birosca@manchester.ac.uk.
requires a careful multi-step processing to achieve steel with
favourable magnetic properties that have a sharp Goss texture.
In general, GO steel production starts from conventional
steelmaking, then follows continuous casting, slab reheating
at 1400◦ C, hot rolling to 2–3 mm, annealing of the hot-
rolled sheet for a short period and a two-step cold rolling
with intermediate annealing or a single cold rolling with
large sheet thickness reduction. The last stage of the process
starts with a primary re-crystallization annealing in a wet
hydrogen atmosphere for decarburizing purposes and this is
followed by a secondary re-crystallization annealing in a dry
hydrogen atmosphere (De Cooman et al., 2007). The sharp
Goss texture develops owing to abnormal Goss grain growth
during the secondary re-crystallization process. However,
various mechanisms of the development of secondary re-
crystallized Goss texture have been proposed recently (Lee,
2006).
It is believed that the formation of Goss-oriented grains in the
early production stages plays a vital role in the development of
the final Goss texture, as reported by Böttcher & Lücke (1993),
who found that the abnormal Goss grain growth cannot occur
if the Goss grains in the surface layer of the hot-rolled steel is
removed. Kim et al. (2000) and Chang (2005, 2007) stated
that hot-rolled GO steel annealing before cold rolling can
lead to a more pronounced grain growth in the primary re-
crystallization stage and a better magnetic flux density as
compared with GO steel omitting this particular process in
GO steel production. Annealing of the hot-rolled GO steels
homogenizes the microstructure and leads to the coarsening
of the MnS and AlN precipitates. Thus, the precipitates
provide only a weak barrier to primary and secondary re-
crystallization, and this results in strong Goss-oriented grain
growth during secondary re-crystallization annealing process
(Chang, 2005). The early stages of the production process
influence not only the final microstructure but also the re-
crystallization microtexture and the magnetic properties of


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GO steels. Although the important role of the microtexture
evolution in early production process is recognized in the
literature, most studies have focussed on texture alterations
during the secondary re-crystallization process. Thus, the
hot-band GO steels were annealed at different annealing
conditions, and the microtexture evolution at each production
stage was investigated in the present study.
It is well known that a small amount of energy is stored
in the crystal lattice during deformation in the form of
defects, such as stacking faults, vacancies, dislocations and
dislocation cell walls (Mughrabi, 1983). Since the quantity of
defects or their interactions is orientation-dependent, grains
having different orientations are expected to store different
amounts of energy during deformation. The stored energy
represents the driving force for re-crystallization (Doherty et al.,
1997); therefore, certain crystallographic orientations will
be enhanced during annealing as compared with others
because of more favourable nucleation and/or growth kinetics.
Because of this correlation between stored energy and
annealing texture, various studies have been carried out to
evaluate the stored energy by measuring peak broadening in
X-ray (Kallend & Huang, 1984) or neutron diffraction patterns
(Rajmohan et al., 1997), and through the determination of the
sub-grain size and misorientation by transmission electron
microscopy (TEM) (Dillamore et al., 1967). The X-ray or
neutron diffraction peak broadening provide a statistically
averaged stored energy for each orientation; however, it cannot
be used to study the heterogeneous distribution of the stored
energy in the individual deformed grains. Nowadays, EBSD
combined with scanning electron microscope (SEM) can be
used to determine both the stored energy within grains and
their orientations. Recently, EBSD data have been used to
measure the pattern quality (Martı́nez-de-Guerenu et al.,
2004), Taylor factor values (Kestens & Jonas, 1996; Castro
et al., 2006) and the sub-grain structure (Choi & Jin, 2004) in
order to estimate the orientation-dependent stored energy in
cold-rolled materials for better understanding of recovery and
re-crystallization mechanisms.
Kestens & Jonas (1996) proposed that the Taylor factors of
individual grains could be used to quantify the orientation-
dependent stored energy within each grain. Taylor theory
assumes that the local deformation of grains is identical to the
macroscopic deformation and the plastic deformation occurs
entirely by dislocation slip. The Taylor factor, M, is defined as
 d γ (s)
M= , (1)
s d εi j
where d γ (s) and d ε i j are the amount of incremental shear for
a specific slip system (s) in a given grain and the plastic strain
increment applied externally, respectively. Therefore, M is a
function of the lattice orientation of the grain as well as the
imposed deformation. Thus, the orientation-dependent stored
energy after deformation can be extracted and mapped using
EBSD data.
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T E X T U R E E VO L U T I O N I N E L E C T R I C A L S T E E L 415
Table 1. GO electrical steel composition used in this study (wt%).
C Si Mn Al P S
0.031 3.09 0.100 0.030 0.013 0.007
In the present paper, the orientation-dependent stored
energy of deformed grains after hot rolling was quantified
by the Taylor factor, which was calculated from EBSD data.
The grain orientations and misorientations between the
grains were also characterized by means of EBSD along
the various production stages. Moreover, microstructure and
microtexture developments of deformed and annealed GO steel
were investigated in details.
Experimental procedure
Table 1 shows the composition of GO electrical steel used in
this study. The steel was supplied as 2.2-mm-thick hot-rolled
sheet. The initial grain sizes were 44.8 ± 2.5 μm in the surface
area and 71.5 ± 11.2 μm in the centre of the hot-rolled
sample cross section. Samples size of 10 × 10 × 2.2 mm
were cut and prepared using standard metallographic sample
preparation prior to annealing. Samples of the hot-rolled
sheet were annealed at 1000◦ C for 5 and 100 min with the
aim of evaluating texture development and grain growth at
different annealing times. The annealing was carried out in a
vacuum tube furnace and the heating and cooling rates were
5◦ C min−1 . Following annealing, the samples were cold rolled
to 0.29 mm corresponding to approximately 87% thickness
reduction using a laboratory mill. The microstructures of hot
rolled, annealed and cold-rolled specimens were investigated
by means of optical microscopy after etching the samples with
4% Nital solution. To obtain a complete description of the
sheet microstructure, both RD–TD and RD–ND sections were
examined (RD, TD and ND are the rolling, transverse and
normal directions, respectively).
The microstructure and microtexture investigations for RD–
ND sections were carried out by means of EBSD. Prior to
examination in the SEM, final polishing was carried out using
colloidal silica for a minimum of 20 min prior to insertion
into the microscope. The samples were characterized using a
ZEISS ULTRA-55 (Göttingen, Germany) field emission gun–
scanning electron microscope (FEG–SEM). For EBSD scans,
the sample was tilted to 70◦ in the SEM sample chamber, the
diffraction pattern was averaged and background corrected
and then digitized into the computer memory where it was
automatically indexed. The operating voltage used was 20 kV
to obtain optimum quality of diffraction patterns. Working
distances were varied from 15 to 18 mm. The microscope was
fitted with a TSL–EBSD system. The data were obtained and
analyzed using the orientation imaging microscopy (OIM 4.6)
software packages. Additional orientation and misorientation
analysis was carried out by means of EBSD. It should be
416 S. M. SHIN ET AL.

mentioned that neither clean-up nor partitioning of the
EBSD data was carried out except for orientation distribution
function (ODF) calculations and inverse pole figure (IPF)
mappings, where only the data with confidence index (CI)
higher than 0.1 and image quality (IQ) higher than 70
were used. Taylor factors were calculated to investigate the
orientation-dependent stored energy of hot- and cold-rolled
samples using the TSL software based on Taylor’s theory for
polycrystalline yielding.
Results and discussion
Figure 1(a) shows the hot-rolled GO steel microtexture and
microstructure image of the specimen cross-section area. The
EBSD-derived IPF–ND map superimposed on a grain boundary
misorientation level map (>15◦ ) is shown in Fig. 1(a). The
figure clearly shows an inhomogeneous microstructure across
the sample thickness in terms of size, shape and aspect
ratios of the grains. As shown in the same figure, the grains
near the steel surface area have equiaxed shape, whereas
elongated grains dominate the central part of the sample cross
section. The grains at the steel surface are subjected to strong
shear stresses during hot rolling, whereas the grain in the
centre of the sheet are subjected to plane strain conditions.
Thus, the grain deformation takes place under various stress
conditions across the sample cross section as explained by
Dieter (1988). In addition, there are strain and temperature
gradients throughout the thickness for the hot-rolled sample

Fig. 1. EBSD-derived maps obtained by orientation imaging microscopy (OIM) of the hot-rolled GO steel cross section (a) inverse pole figure (IPF)–normal
direction (ND) map overlaid with high-angle grain boundary (>15◦ ) and (b) orientation distribution function (ODF) sections ϕ 2 = 0◦ and 45◦ for surface
and central areas of the steel sheet cross section.


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(Raabe & Lücke, 1993). Practically, water sprays that located
in front of each roll reduce the surface temperature of the
steel sheet. The lower temperature at the surface of the steel
sheet reduces the interaction between defects during rolling,
and results in grains near the steel surface having a high
stored energy. The high stored energy of the grains and
strong shear stresses in the surface area result in dynamic
re-crystallization. Thus, re-crystallized equiaxed grains are
observed at the surface of the hot-rolled GO steel (see Fig. l (a)).
In the central area, the temperature remains too high,
and dynamic recovery prevents re-crystallization; the grains,
therefore, show an elongated ‘pancake-like’ shape.
Figure 1(b) shows the ODFs for both surface and central
area of the same sample shown in Fig. 1(a). The surface
area displayed strong {112}111 and {110}112 texture
components as well as a weak Goss texture component.
Raabe & Lücke (1993) stated that these texture components
are developed as a result of shear deformation and become
progressively weaker in the central area of the rolled cross
section. This is related to the changes in shear strain,
temperature and strain rate through the thickness. The
central layer is deformed in a plane strain manner. As can
be seen in Fig. 1(b), the texture in the centre has a strong
α-fibre. Furthermore, the {001}110 component is strong
and there is a very weak γ fibre. The change in deformation
mode from the shear deformation at the surface to the
plane strain deformation in the centre results not only in an
inhomogeneous microstructure but also leads to a texture
gradient throughout the thickness in the hot-rolled sheet.
Figures 2(a) and (b) show the microstructure and
microtexture of the hot-rolled samples annealed for 5 and
100 min after hot rolling, respectively. All grains through the
sheet thickness have experienced considerable grain growth.
The grain size increased with increasing annealing time. The
majority of the grains increased in size by approximately 8%
after annealing for 5 min, and by approximately 10% after
100 min annealing at 1000◦ C. However, the microstructure
remains very inhomogeneous in terms of grain size and shape
distributions, as was the case for the hot-rolled sheet. The
texture inhomogeneity throughout the thickness was also
maintained after the annealing of the hot-rolled sample. The
central areas in both 5- and 100-min-annealed GO samples
have a texture similar to the texture of the hot-rolled GO
steel, which has strong α fibre texture with a maximum
intensity at {001}110. Interestingly, a weak Cube texture
component is observed in the 5-min- annealed GO sample.
This texture component is believed to play an important role
in improving magnetic properties in the final product (Tomida,
1996). From this, it is assumed that shorter annealing times
might be advantageous for reducing the production cost and
maintaining essential texture components in the final product.
However, this observation requires further investigation and
will not be discussed further in the present study. The surface
area of both 5- and 100-min-annealed samples have strong
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{112}111 and {110}112 texture components (see Figs
2(a) and (b)). The 100-min-annealed sample shows a stronger
Goss texture component than the 5-min-annealed sample
at the surface area. It is believed that the amount of Goss
texture component at early production stage is correlated to
its dominance in the final product due to its stability during
the processing (Lee, 2006). Recent study by Dorner et al.
(2007) has shown that two types of Goss-oriented regions
with different origins existed in cold-rolled material, but only
one type of Goss grains that are found between microbands
were retained during cold rolling. The authors claimed that
this type of Goss grains may have characteristic influence
on the formation of Goss-oriented grains during primary re-
crystallization and consequently the abnormal Goss grain
growth during secondary re-crystallization. Therefore, it is
expected that the 100-min-annealed GO steel may have
more Goss-oriented grains than the 5-min-annealed GO steel
after secondary re-crystallization annealing. From the present
study, it is observed that the annealing of hot-rolled GO
steel causes considerable grain growth. However, this scarcely
affects the inhomogeneity of microstructure and microtexture
throughout the thickness in the hot-rolled steel.
Although the major texture components of the hot-rolled
GO steel remained present during annealing, the texture
component intensities at both surface and central areas were
changed. Figure 2 shows that the maximum intensities of
ODFs at the surface area for 5- and 100-min-annealed GO
samples were increased by approximately 70% and 30%,
respectively. Moreover, the maximum intensities of ODFs in the
central area of both samples were decreased by approximately
40% and 35%, respectively. This may be explained by the
effect of annealing of hot-rolled GO steel. Chang (2005)
claimed that annealing of hot-rolled GO steel homogenizes
the microstructures of hot-rolled GO steel and leads to a
coarsening of the AlN precipitates. However, in the present
work, texture component intensity modification was observed
instead of microstructure homogenization across the thickness
of the hot-rolled GO steel. Texture strengthening was observed
near the surface area of the annealed GO steel, where Goss-
oriented grains are preferentially re-crystallized, whereas the
texture in the central area was weaker (see Figs 1(b) and 2).
From this, it can be concluded that the annealing of hot-rolled
GO steel before cold rolling is essential for strengthening or
weakening texture components in different areas of the sample
cross section, as well as causing precipitate redistribution. It
should be mentioned that phase identification of precipitates
and their distribution in the annealed GO steel microstructure
is out of the scope of the present study, and further work is
needed to determine the effects of the annealing conditions of
the hot-rolled sheet on precipitation for better understanding
of abnormal Goss grain growth mechanism during the final
annealing process.
The microtexture of cold-rolled samples after annealing for
different times, are presented in IPF/–ND maps and the ODF
418 S. M. SHIN ET AL.
Fig. 2. EBSD-derived IPF–ND map, surface and central areas ODF sections ϕ 2 = 0◦ and 45◦ of hot-rolled GO steel sheet cross section after (a) 5-min and
(b) 100-min annealing.
sections of ϕ 2 = 0◦ and 45◦ in Fig. 3. As can be seen from
the figure, all the grains are elongated in the RD because
of the rolling process. The cold-rolled sample annealed for
5 min prior to cold rolling (5-min anneal + CR) has thicker
and elongated grains in the central layer, as indicated in
Fig. 3(a), and strongly deformed grains in the surface area.
However, in the cold-rolled sample annealed for 100 min
prior to cold rolling (100-min anneal + CR), there is a much
more homogeneously elongated microstructure throughout
the cross section as shown in Fig. 3(b). The difference in
thickness of elongated grains, as indicated in Figs 3(a) and (b),
is related to the different annealing times prior to cold rolling.
Annealing after hot rolling influences the microstructure and
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orientation distribution during cold rolling and this modifies
the microstructure throughout the thickness of the sheet cross
section. The different elongated grain thicknesses may also be
related to the presence of precipitates and their distribution,
where they grow during annealing of the hot-rolled GO steel.
Although the ODF results of both samples are similar, the
texture component distributions across the thickness were
different for the 5-min anneal + CR and the 100-min anneal
+ CR samples. As shown in Figs 3(a) and (b), both cold-rolled
samples have a pronounced α fibre and a rather weak γ fibre.
This is in agreement with the work of Hölscher et al. (1991).
It should be noted that the texture components along the α
fibre, which were already developed in the central area after

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 T E X T U R E E VO L U T I O N I N E L E C T R I C A L S T E E L 419

Fig. 3. EBSD-derived IPF–ND map and ODFs (sections ϕ 2 = 0◦ and 45◦ ) of cold-rolled GO steel cross section (a) 5-min anneal + CR and (b) 100-min
anneal + CR.

hot rolling, were strengthened throughout the whole cross
section during cold rolling.
Following each of the GO steel processing stages, the
developments of the major texture components were examined
using EBSD technique. Figures 4 and 5 show the major
texture components distribution and their volume fraction
alterations throughout the GO steel processing stages. The
crystal orientation maps shown in Fig. 4 are superimposed
on the IQ maps. As shown in Fig. 5, six crystal orientations
were selected as the major grain orientations for GO steel:
{110}001 (Goss), {100}001 (Cube), {001}110 (rotated
Cube), {111}112, {111}110 and {112}110. Goss-
oriented grains were found mainly in the surface area of the
both annealed samples as well as the hot-rolled sample (see
Fig. 4). {001}110 and {112}110 are the strongest texture
components at all the stages from hot rolling to cold rolling
(see Fig. 5). They are present mainly in the central area of
the hot-rolled and annealed samples (see Fig. 4). Hölscher
et al. (1991) reported that the central layer of cold-rolled sheet
had a much stronger {112}110 texture component than
the surface layer. However, in the present work {112}110
texture was present throughout the cross section of the cold-
rolled specimens. The spread of {112}110 texture through
the thickness of the cross section may be caused by the
annealing effects before cold rolling. The volume fraction of
Goss texture component was reduced during cold rolling, as

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420 S. M. SHIN ET AL.

Fig. 4. Crystal orientation map superimposed on image quality map of GO steel sheet cross section (a) hot rolled, (b) 5-min annealed, (c) 100-min annealed,
(d) 5-min anneal + CR and (e) 100-min anneal + CR.


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Fig. 5. Crystal orientation volume fractions of major texture components for GO steel after each processing step.
can be seen in Fig. 5. By contrast, the intensity of γ fibre
texture components such as {111}110 and {111}112
increased during cold rolling. This is in agreement with Raabe
& Lücke (1993), who claimed that the Goss component at the
steel sub-surface rotates to {111}112 during cold rolling
as expected from Taylor’s theory. The authors stated that the
volume fraction of Goss orientation decreased whereas the
{111}112 orientation increased during cold rolling owing
to their rotation correlations. The amount of {112}110
oriented grains increased after annealing the hot-rolled sample
for 100 min and sharply increased after cold rolling. However,
the volume fraction of Cube texture remained virtually
constant through the hot rolling, annealing and cold rolling
processes. The volume fraction of the major grain orientations
of GO steel remained largely constant after annealing the
hot-rolled GO steel, whereas the Goss orientation weakened
and {001}110, {111}112, {111}110 and {112}110
orientations strengthened after cold rolling.
As can be seen from Fig. 5, the difference in texture
intensity after 5- and 100-min anneal is negligible except
for the {112}110 and {001}110 texture components.
In fact the presence of the {112}110 and {111}112
oriented grains in the cold-rolled electrical steel is essential, as
these grains form Goss-oriented grains in the final annealing
process. The sharp {112}110 rolling texture leads to a
sharp {111}112 re-crystallization texture because of their
orientation relationship: 35◦ around the <110> TD (Lücke,
1993). Furthermore, it is believed that the {111}112
component forms the Goss orientation after re-crystallization
(Dorner et al., 2004). Earlier work by Park & Szpunar (2003)
has shown that new Goss grains are mainly nucleated within
shear bands in the deformed {{111}112, {111}110
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and {112}110 grains during the primary re-crystallization
annealing process. Therefore, the 100-min anneal + CR
sample may eventually have a higher amount of Goss-
oriented grains than the 5-min anneal + CR sample after re-
crystallization annealing. It is clear from the present study
that the annealing time prior to cold rolling has a pronounced
influence on the texture components intensities and texture
developments during steel processing.
As shown in Fig. 1(a), the grains were deformed and partially
re-crystallized during hot rolling. The Taylor factor can be
used to quantify the orientation-dependent stored energy of
deformed grains. It can therefore be applied for both hot-
and cold-rolled sheets. Figure 6 shows a Taylor factor map
calculated from EBSD data of the hot-rolled GO steel. The
surface layer displayed higher Taylor factors than the central
layer of the sample cross section. As discussed earlier, the
grains near the rolled steel surface have a high stored energy
due to a combination of strong shear stresses and relatively
low temperatures during hot rolling. The high Taylor factor
values of the grains in the surface area, which are evaluated
from EBSD orientation data, demonstrate their large amount
of stored energy. The blue grains indicated in the circled areas
in Fig. 6 are the Goss-oriented grains. It is observed that most of
the Goss-oriented grains are surrounded by high Taylor factor
especially near the surface. An enlarged area of a Goss grain
can be seen in Fig. 6(a). Dorner et al. (2004) attributed the
transition from a {111}112 deformation texture to the Goss
re-crystallization texture to the fact that the Taylor factor of
Goss-oriented grains is lower than that of the {111}112
oriented matrix grains. It is well known that the grains that
have high Taylor factors tend to be consumed by the grains that
have lower Taylor factors in order to release their high stored
422 S. M. SHIN ET AL.
Fig. 6. EBSD-derived Taylor factor map of hot-rolled GO steel.
energy (Lee, 2006). This is in agreement with the findings of
the present study. As can be seen from Fig. 6 (area b and c),
the grains with high Taylor factor values were consumed by
low Taylor factor values grains. From these observations, it is
expected that the Goss-oriented grains that deformed during
the rolling and have a low Taylor factor to consume the high
Taylor factor value neighbouring grains.
Taylor factor evaluation of individual deformed grains
and its correlation with grain orientation are essential for
a better understanding of the texture developments of GO
electrical steel during the deformation. Further individual
crystal orientation analysis has been carried in the present
study to investigate the microtextural and microstructural
developments of GO electrical steel during steel processing. All
the data indicated the important role of careful control of steel
processing in order to obtain a favourable grain orientation in
the microstructure.
Conclusions
The main conclusions of the present work are as follows:
• In the absence of a reliable technique such as EBSD, it is
difficult to correlate the microstructural phenomena to the
grain orientations in order to obtain a better understanding
of the texture evolution of GO electrical steel during steel
processing.
• The microstructure and microtexture across the
cross section of hot-rolled GO electrical steel are not
homogeneous. The grains near the surface area of the
hot-rolled steel are equiaxed and have the {112}111,
{110}112 and Goss orientation, whereas the grains in
the centre have an elongated shape and an α fibre and
rotated cube orientation. This inhomogeneous structure
across the hot-rolled GO steel sheet cross section is related to
the hot-rolling conditions. Moreover, the inhomogeneous
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microstructure and microtexture are maintained during
annealing of the hot-rolled steel.
• The longer annealing time after hot rolling can affect grain
orientations significantly. It is believed that the shear bands
in a deformed {112}110 grains are the main new Goss
grain nucleation sites during the primary re-crystallization
annealing process. It is observed in the present study that the
intensity of this {112}110 texture component increased
with increasing annealing time.
• The EBSD orientation data can be used to correlate Taylor
theory with the microtexture of deformed GO steel. The
Goss-oriented grains in the hot-rolled steel were found to
have low Taylor factor values and surrounded by the high
Taylor factor value grains. Furthermore, the grains with
high Taylor factor values were observed to be consumed by
the grains with low Taylor factor values.
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