Ultrasonic monitoring of texture in cold‐rolled steel sheets

An ultrasonic method is tested for the nondestructive evaluation of rolling recrystallization texture in cold‐rolled steel sheets. To determine three orientation distribution coefficients (ODCs) of the fourth order, propagation velocities were measured of the longitudinal and shear waves in the thickness direction and the shear‐horizontal (SH0) plate mode within the sheet plane. A simple rule of mixture is used to estimate the volume fractions of the principal components of rolling recrystallization texture. The volume fractions are used to calculate the plastic strain ratio (r value) and the ultrasonic pole figures with the aid of single‐crystal values. Both predictions are compared with conventional (destructive) methods. A useful result is the correlation between the in‐plane average of r values and the longitudinal/shear wave‐velocity ratio, which occurs accompanying the large proportion of crystallites oriented around the {111} component.