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EBSD measures grain orientation. The grains can be either be randomly orientated or have a preferred or dominant orientation. A dominant orientation is called a texture.
The texture in materials influences its formability to shapes of components. It is important to understand how the material texture changes during processing and how it affects the material properties. In other words, different processing techniques will generate different textures in the final material and by combining different processing methods it is possible to design materials with a desired texture.
EBSD measures and visualises texture variations through materials, offering a benefit over some techniques (e.g. XRD) which only provide an average from the analysed area.
Titanium and its alloys are applied in a range of applications in aerospace component, owning to their high corrosion resistance and strength.
Magnesium and its alloys are the lightest structural metallic materials and so are used in many weight saving applications in modern cars
Aluminium is another highly important lightweight metals used in automotive applications to reduce vehicle weight. Crystallographic texture engineering through a combination of intelligent processing and alloying is a powerful and effective tool to obtain superior aluminium alloys with optimized strength and ductility resulting forming behaviour for automotive applications, i.e. powertrain, chassis and body in white.
Here is a typical Goss texture in an aluminium alloy forming during wrought process.
Understanding microstructure is fundamental to producing steels with specific mechanical properties for automotive applications. The integration of EBSD & EDS is a powerful microanalytical solution for monitoring microstructure, which aids the understanding of the relationship between materials processing, microstructure and performance..
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