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Investigating the origin of cube texture during static recrystallization of fcc metals : A full field crystal plasticity-phase field study

The origin of cube recrystallization texture in medium to high stacking-fault energy fcc metals has been debated for almost 70 years. Despite numerous experimental and simulation studies, many issues regarding the nucleation and growth of cube grains remain unresolved. Here we apply a full field crystal plasticity model utilizing a dislocation density based constitutive theory to study the deformation and texture evolution in copper (Cu) under plane strain compression. Additionally, we use the phase field method, along with a stochastic nucleation model, for static recrystallization simulations. Simulation results show that the volume fraction of the cube component during deformation decreases with increasing strain. Although cube grains are not stable during plane strain compression, some of the non-cube grains rotate towards cube and develop narrow cube bands near the grain boundary region. With increasing deformation, the cube component accumulates dislocation density faster than other texture components. High stored energy in the cube regions leads to preferential nucleation of cube grains during static recrystallization. These cube nuclei originate from the intergranular cube bands. Although the cube component has a clear nucleation advantage, none of the texture component appears to have a growth advantage. Instead, simulation results show that heterogeneous distribution of nuclei has a profound influence on the resulting grain size distribution. During recrystallization, a significant increase in cube volume fraction is observed mainly due to high nucleation frequency of cube grains.