Recrystallization and grain growth in titanium: I. characterization of the structure

Transmission electron microscopy, quantitative optical microscopy, and texture studies were made on swaged and recrystallized titanium wire of three impurity contents: zone refined, a special lot of intermediate purity, and commercial A-70. The electron microscopy studies revealed that a) during recrystallization a number of processes overlap, and b) during grain growth there occurs a decrease in the dislocation density within the grains along with the increase in the average grain size. The quantitative microscopy studies indicated that the linear intercept grain size distribution is approximately log normal and that for a given mean grain size the distribution is relatively independent of the combination of annealing time and temperature used to obtain it. Moreover, there exists a range of grain sizes in space, the numbers of grains in each class interval changing with increase in grain size. The so-called grain shape factor decreases with increase in mean grain size (annealing time) at a constant temperature and with decrease in temperature for a constant grain size. The texture of the as-swaged wire and the changes in the texture during grain growth are in qualitative accord with those previously reported for deformed and recrystallized titanium. Impurity content influences the degree of these various structural characteristics but not their substance.