Abstract
The production of ear free aluminium flat rolled products highly depends on the ability to balance the deformation and recrystallization textures at the final gauge. A model based on the concept of earing diagram is proposed, which enables the process-texture-earing relationships to be assessed in a fairly simple way. It is shown that such a predictive tool can be used for the definition of optimized fabrication schedules leading to ear free material. Such earing control is achieved by a control of both the microstructural evolution as well as the position of the recrystallization steps along the complete fabrication sequence.