Texture control of commercial pure aluminum sheets by cross rolling with an idle roll

Recently, the authors proposed a continuous spreading method for thin strips by cross rolling. This method employs a flat platen and an idle tapered roll moving over the material width. So the continuous widening of strip width could be virtually realized by repetition of material feeding in the longitudinal direction and reducing thickness between a platen and a roll. It is also aimed to control textures or lower the anisotropy of sheets by changing strain path during deformation. A commercial pure aluminum sheets were used to investigate the mechanical properties, microstructures and textures of the materials fabricated by the above method. The influence of three different angles of tapered rolls on texture evolution was especially focused. As a result, the rotation of orientations from the as-received texture is enhanced by smaller roll taper angle and higher reduction in the rolling textures of the as-rolled sheets. Conversely, the asymmetry of the texture around TD-axis particularly evolves in the case of higher reduction and larger taper angle of roll. In the recrystallization textures, Cube orientation strongly dominates in the cases of larger taper angle. The rolling conditions are optimized to obtain the sheet with smaller planar anisotropy.