3D Non-Destructive Characterization of Electrical Steels for Quantitative Texture Analysis with Lab-Based X-ray Diffraction Contrast Tomography

Electrical steels with high Si contents are widely used in electrical power transformers, motors and generators. Texture is the most important property for electrical steel as the orientations of grains have strong influences on the magnetization and electrical resistance of the materials. Lab-based diffraction contrast tomography (lab-based DCT) is a recently developed X-ray-based technique that can map the grain morphology and crystallographic orientation nondestructively in 3D. The capability of lab-based DCT in characterizing the grain structure of both non-oriented and grain-oriented electrical steels provides important complementary information to commonly used techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD) and electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) in terms of full 3D grain mapping and significant grain statistics. In this work, we will present several case studies of using lab-based DCT to characterize the grain structure of both non-oriented and oriented electrical steels, with discussion on how this non-destructive 3D technique will contribute to the texture analysis in electrical steels.