Effect of Pre-recovery Annealing on Microstructure and Texture of Thin-gauge Non-oriented Silicon Steel

Casting-rolling thin-gauge non-oriented silicon steel was subjected to direct recrystallization annealing and a two-stage annealing process including pre-recovery annealing process, respectively. The effects of annealing process on recrystallized microstructure and texture of non-oriented silicon steel were studied by optical microscope, EBSD and X-ray diffraction. The results show that the microstructure after direct recrystallization annealing exhibits strong γ-fiber and α’-fiber texture, and the average grain size is only 65.1 μm. After introducing pre-recovery annealing, the average grain size of the recrystallized structure gradually increases to 87.3 μm with the increase of pre-annealing temperature. In addition, the γ-fiber recrystallization texture is gradually weakened, while the λ-fiber texture is gradually enhanced. The volume fraction of 100texture in the recrystallized microstructure subjected pre-annealing at 550 ℃ reaches 42.3%, which is 31.7% higher than that of direct recrystallization annealing.