Dr. Stuart Wright, Senior Scientist, EDAX

In my research on the origins of the term texture to describe preferred lattice orientation I spent some time looking at one of the classic texts on the subject: Bunge’s “red bible” as we called it in our research group in grad school – Texture Analysis in Materials Science Mathematical Methods (1969). As I was reading I found an interesting passage as it relates to where we are with EBSD today:

“In a polycrystalline material crystallites of different shape, size and orientation are generally present. It can thus also occur that regions of different orientation are not separated from one another by unequivocally defined grain boundaries, but that, on the contrary, the orientation changes continuously from one point to another. If one desires to completely describe the crystal orientation of a polycrystalline material, one must specify the relevant orientation g for each point with coordinates x, y, z within the sample:

g=g(x,y,z)           (3.1)

If one writes g in EULER’s angles, this mean explicitly

φ_1=φ_1 (x,y,z);  Φ=Φ(x,y,z);  φ_2=φ_2 (x,y,z);           (3.2)

One thus requires three functions, each of these variables, which are also discontinuous at grain boundaries. Such a representation of the crystal orientation is very complicated. Where therefore observe that it has as yet been experimentally determined in only a very few cases (see, for example, references 139-141, 200-203), and that its mathematical treatment is so difficult that it is not practically applicable.”

I don’t quote these lines to detract in any way from the legacy of Professor Bunge in the field of texture analysis. I did not know Professor Bunge well but in all my interactions with him he was always very patient with my questions and generous with his time. Professor Bunge readily embraced new technology as it advanced texture analysis forward including automated EBSD. I quote this passage to show that the ideas behind what we might today call 3D texture analysis were germinated very early on. The work on Orientation Coherence by Brent Adams I quoted in Part 2 of this series was one of the first to mathematically build on these ideas. Now with serial sectioning via the FIB or other means coupled with EBSD as well as high-energy x-ray diffraction it is possible to realize the experimental side of these ideas in a, perhaps not routine but certainly, tractable manner.

Others have anticipated these advancements as well. In chapter 2 of Rudy Wenk’s 1985 book entitled Preferred Orientation in Deformed Metal and Rocks: An introduction to Modern Texture Analysis it states:

“Pole figures and fabric diagrams provide information only about the orientation of crystals. It may be desirable to know the relation between the spatial distribution of grains and grain shape with respect to crystallographic orientation. Orientation relations between neighboring grains further defined the fabric and help to elucidate its significance.”

But let us return to the theme of aimless wanderin’s in texture terminology. The title for Chapter 4 of Bunge’s book is “Expansion of Orientation Distribution Functions in Series of Generalized Spherical Harmonics”. This chapter describes a solution the determination of the three-dimensional ODF (orientation distribution function) from two-dimensional pole figures. The chapter has a sub-title “Three-Dimensional Textures”. The three dimensions in this chapter of Bunge’s book are in orientation space (the three Euler Angles). What we call today a 3D texture is actually a 6D description with three dimensions in orientation space and three spatial dimensions (e.g. x, y and z). And those working with High-Energy x-rays have also characterized spatially resolved orientation distributions for in-situ experiments thus adding a seventh dimension of time, temperature, strain, …

It is nice to know in the nearly 50 years since Bunge’s book was published that what can sometimes appear to be aimless wanderin’s with mixed up terminology has actually lead us to higher dimensions of understanding. But, before we take too much credit for these advances in the “metallurgical arts”, as it says on the Google Scholar home page we “stand on the shoulders of giants” who envisioned and laid the groundwork for these advances.