Through-thickness texture gradient and microhardness of cold-rolled AA6061

In this work, cold rolling is used to deform AA6061 plates plastically. The textures of the cold-rolled plates are investigated by electron backscatter diffraction. There exists spatial distribution of the textures in the thickness direction, which depends on the thickness reduction. The textures near the positions about 1/4 of the thickness to the surface consist of the compression rolling texture and the shear texture associated with the contact-induced shear. For large thickness reduction (≥70%), the textures are a weak function of the spatial variable in the thickness direction, and become the typical β-fiber deformation texture. Microindentation test is performed to analyze the effect of cold rolling on localized mechanical behavior of the AA6061 plates. There is no observable variation of indentation hardness in the thickness direction. A simple relationship between indentation hardness and the texture coefficients is established, and supported by the experimental results.