Ultrasonic monitoring of texture in aluminum alloy during annealing

This paper presents the measurement results of texture in an aluminum-magnesium alloy (Al5xxx) during annealing. The long term strategy is to gather information of texture and microstructure using in-situ ultrasonic measurement and to control the hot rolling process. The texture is characterized in terms of three orientation distribution coefficients (ODCs), i.e., W400, W420, and W440, which are inferred from ultrasonic velocity measurements. The electromagnetic-acoustic transducers (EMAT) are used to measure those quantitities because of their non-contact characteristics. We reported the preliminary results on the last year's QNDE conference in Snowbird, Utah. The progress and recent measurement results are included in this paper. - Ames Laboratory is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Iowa State University under Contract W-7405-ENG-82. This work was supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences as a part of the Center of Excellence of the Synthesis and Processing of Advanced Materials