Abstract
Work done for this paper centres around two themes: 1) the characterization of the through-thickness inhomogeneity of texture observed in certain deep drawing steels, and 2) attempting to understand to what extent the presence of this inhomogeneity affects the correlation between the texture and the bulk plastic anisotropy of the specimens. For this, the textural inhomogeneities in three deep drawing steels, two interstitial free and one aluminum killed, were measured and described using the orientation distribution function (ODF). The bulk plastic anisotropies of these specimens were obtained through the measurement of the r-value. The impact of the measured inhomogeneities on the bulk properties was analyzed by comparing the r-value anisotropies calculated using a series expansion method from the various texture measurements made through the sheet thicknesses to the experimental r-values. It was observed that the textural inhomogeneities in the specimens were slight and consisted mainly of small Goss components at the surface and sub-surface of the sheets, which were not observed at the sheet centres. The impact of these inhomogeneities was small, but generally the r-value predictions made from the textures measured at the sheet centres were better correlated with the experimental r-value anisotropies.