Electron backscatter diffraction helps direct calculation of magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy in API 5L steels

This paper shows evidence of the capability of electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) to accurately estimate the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy (MAE) of API 5L steels. The crystallographic texture of five circular steel samples was characterized by X-ray global texture and EBSD microtexture measurements. The average MAE of each one of these samples was estimated from the set of individual grain orientations obtained from orientation maps measured by EBSD. The angular dependence of EBSD-derived MAE was compared with predictions made from X-ray texture and Barkhausen noise (BHN) measurements. The average MAE determined from the EBSD data is in good agreement with the predictions made from X-ray and BHN measurements for all the studied samples. This agreement can be explained by the fact that the number of grains used to predict the average MAE from the EBSD results was statistically sufficient to reproduce the MAE predicted by the other two methods. The EBSD measurement strategy for the accurate MAE estimation was established in terms of parameters such as the number of individual grain orientations to be measured, the sample's texture acuity and grain size, the use of equivalent orientations given by the statistical orthorhombic symmetry of the studied samples, and different measurement planes.