the effects of pearlite fraction. Compared with the equiaxial and randomly oriented ferrite-pearlite microstructure in lowcarbon steels, the caliber-rolled ultrafine-grained steel bars exhibit specific microstructural features of column-shaped ferrite grains elongated along the rolling direction (RD), preferred-grain orientations, e.g., the preferred crystal directions parallel to the RD, and a high density of dislocations. In a strongly textured Ni-based alloy with pancake-shaped grains, the linear dependence of the strength on the Taylor factors in different deformation modes and deformation directions indicated that the plastic anisotropy of the alloy was almost entirely caused by the texture, but was irrelevant to the grain-shape anisotropy. [5] Therefore, the texture and substructural features in the caliber-rolled ultrafine-grained steels will undoubtedly influence the mechanical properties of low-carbon steels, as well as the plastic anisotropy. It seems instructive to compare the solid-solution and grain-refinement factors with the texture or substructural features, considering the contributions to the yield strength of ultrafine-grained steels.The Taylor factor is a unique parameter that relates the macroscopic deformation behavior of materials to the microstructural features, i.e., the texture of the aggregated grains and the activation tolerance of the specific slip systems. [6,7] It is defined as the ratio of the shear strain rate in the slip systems over the equivalent strain rate, as shown in Eq.[1]. [8] [
METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS ACaliber rolling at the recrystallization temperatures of ferrite is a new process that was developed to fabricate an ultrafine-grained microstructure for low-carbon steels. In the present investigation, the electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) measurement was carried out to characterize thoroughly the texture and substructural features in two caliber-rolled low-carbon steels, with special attention on the effects of a phosphorus addition to the steel and the annealing treatment after rolling. Finer ferrite grains appeared in the phosphorus-added steel under the same rolling condition. The phosphorus addition caused also the stronger Ͻ110Ͼ//rolling direction (RD) fiber texture in the caliber-rolled steel bars and, hence, showed a larger average Taylor factor than the steel without phosphorus. Microband features within the ultrafine ferrite grains were characterized with both transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observation and orientation-imaging micrograph (OIM) analysis. Nearly half of the low-angle boundaries, whose kernel average misorientation was larger than 0.8 deg, were found to have the planar character and were specifically parallel to the {110} or {112} planes. In the as-rolled condition, the total volume fraction of the low-angle boundaries was 0.3 and 0.23 in the steels with and without a phosphorus addition, respectively. More {112}-type planar boundaries were observed than the {110} type boundaries in both steels. Annealing treatment i...