The Origins of the Goss Orientation in Non-Oriented Electrical Steel and the Evolution of the Goss Texture during Thermomechanical Processing

During the manufacturing of non-oriented electrical steel laminations for electric motor or generator applications, the Goss ({110}) texture frequently appears in several stages of the processing. To understand the origin and the evolution of this texture, a non-oriented electrical steel (2.8 wt% Si) is processed through hot rolling, hot band annealing, cold rolling and final annealing, and the origins of the Goss orientation and the evolution of the Goss texture in these processes are investigated by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) techniques. It is seen that hot rolling results in a high volume fraction (approximate to 30%) of the Goss grains near the surfaces of the rolled plate, but the subsequent hot band annealing significantly reduces it to less than 10%. After cold rolling, the Goss volume fraction further decreases to only about 1%. Three locations of the Goss grains are observed in the cold-rolled matrix, that is, those within the shear bands of two symmetrically equivalent {111} grains, those embedded in the microbands of one of the {111} grains, and those at the grain boundaries between the {111} and {113} grains. The formation mechanisms of these three types of Goss grains are explained using a transition band model and a rigid inclusion model.