Role of deformation twins in static recrystallization kinetics of high-purity alpha titanium

The importance of deformation twins in static recrystallization kinetics of high-purity alpha titanium was investigated by carrying out thermal annealing tests of deformed materials in combination with electron-backscatterdiffraction- based microstructural analysis. Prior to thermal annealing, the material was compressed to a true strain of 0.22 along three directions to introduce different twinning characteristics. Our results showed that deformation twins substantially promoted the static recrystallization process by deepening the microstructural inhomogeneity induced by the formation of twin boundaries and twinning-induced crystallographic lattice reorientation. Twin morphology was also observed to be important because it influenced the extent of microstructural inhomogeneity. Intersecting twin morphology, caused by the activation of multiple twin variants, was more effective than parallel twin morphology, caused by the activation of a single twin variant (or a twin variant pair), because it gave rise to more twin boundaries, more twin boundary junctions (intersections, triple junctions, etc.), and greater in-grain crystallographic orientation spread.