LAUSR

The microstructure evolution during the annealing treatment of a recycled copper after cold rolling to total strain of 2.6 was investigated. The cold deformation resulted in the elongation of initial grains along rolling direction and the strain-induced formation of subboundaries. Annealing recovery occurred in the temperature range 100-250 °C. The recrystallized microstructures were observed after annealing at 300-400 °C. The hardness of partially recrystallized copper samples was interpreted in terms of dislocation strengthening. The recrystallization kinetics was estimated according to a Johnson–Mehl–Avrami–Kolmogorov equation using different methods for recrystallized fraction determination, i.e., the fractional softening, the grain orientation spread, and the Kernel average misorientation.