Abstract: Grain-oriented silicon steel is a metallic soft magnetic material with sharp Goss texture ({011}〈100〉). The formation and evolution of Goss texture run through the whole process of hot rolling, normalizing, cold rolling, decarburization annealing and high temperature annealing. Based on “heredity” characteristics of microstructure and crystallography orientations, the origin and evolution of Goss texture in grain-oriented silicon steel are systematically reviewed in this paper. During the hot rolling stage, the Goss texture originates from shear deformation in the subsurface of the hot rolled plate, with the primary cause being the uneven shear strain along the plate thickness direction induced by friction between the rolls and the plate surface. Normalization treatment was used to “filter” and “strengthen” the Goss “seeds” initially formed in the hot-rolled sheet, and the precipitation state of the inhibitor and the distribution of grain boundary characteristics were optimized. During the cold rolling process, the majority of Goss orientations transform into γ-fiber texture, while a small portion of the orientation “seeds” remains in a metastable state within the shear bands and deformation bands. The decarburization annealing treatment induces recrystallization in the cold-rolled matrix, and the “residual” Goss orientation “seeds” nucleate within shear bands and deformation bands, where it is “reconstructed” into Goss-oriented grains with abnormal growth potential. In the high temperature annealing stage, a small number of Goss grains grow abnormally in the inhibitor pinned matrix, and finally form a sharp Goss texture. Regarding the mechanism of abnormal growth of Goss grains, the academia has successively proposed the coincidence site lattice grain boundary (CSL) theory, the high-energy grain boundary (HE) theory and the solid-state infiltration (SSW) theory. The three theories explain the selective growth mechanism of Goss grains from the perspective of grain boundary structure, grain boundary energy and grain boundary energy anisotropy, but they are still controversial. In this paper, the research context of this direction is systematically sorted out to provide reference for process optimization and theoretical innovation of high-performance grain-oriented silicon steel.

Key words: grain-oriented silicon steel; Goss texture; texture evolution; secondary recrystallization; abnormal grain growth; inhibitor