A successful book covering an important area of materials science, now available in paperback.

The great majority of solid-state materials – natural as well as man-made ones – have a polycrystalline structure. They consist of crystallites having various sizes, shapes and crystallographic orientations. Because of the anisotropy of crystal properties, the material as a whole may also be anisotropic if the orientation distribution of the crystallites is not random. Furthermore, because of the differently oriented anisotropies of neighbouring crystals, the material is also micro-inhomogeneous. Macroscopic anisotropy and micro-inhomogeneity are thus fundamental properties of all polycrystalline materials. Therefore, the study of preferred crystal orientations, or crystallographic texture, is of major interest in research and industrial applications. Analysis of the crystal texture is now a well-established tool for quality control and failure analysis in industry, as well as in academic research, because of the ready availability of commercial equipment and refined computer programs.

Volume is indexed by Thomson Reuters CPCI-S (WoS). Natural, as well as man-made, materials are often assumed to behave uniformly, exhibiting equal strength in all directions, because most of them have a polycrystalline structure. The anisotropy of the individual crystals, however, is smoothed out only in the presence of a large number of grains having a random distribution of orientations. In reality, there usually remains an anisotropy due to the existence of preferred orientations. Its magnitude depends upon the statistical distribution of grain orientations – the "crystallographic texture" or, more simply, the texture. –This governs the extremes, of the physical property of interest, which a single crystal of the material under consideration can exhibit in directional tests. Local variations in texture, as well as the arrangements and types of grain/phase boundaries, may give rise to inhomogeneous material properties. The texture also carries with it information on the history of a material’s processing, use and misuse. A knowledge of the texture is a prerequisite for all quantitative techniques of materials characterization, and is based upon the interpretation of diffraction-peak intensities. It is also necessary to model the relationships between microstructural features and physical or mechanical properties. Therefore, the texture is of great value for quality control in a wide range of industrial applications, and in basic materials research.

Natural, as well as man-made, materials are often assumed to behave uniformly, exhibiting equal strength in all directions, because most of them have a polycrystalline structure. The anisotropy of the individual crystals, however, is smoothed out only in the presence of a large number of grains having a random distribution of orientations. In reality, there usually remains an anisotropy due to the existence of preferred orientations. Its magnitude depends upon the statistical distribution of grain orientations - the crystallographic texture or, more simply, the texture. -This governs the extremes, of the physical property of interest, which a single crystal of the material under consideration can exhibit in directional tests. Local variations in texture, as well as the arrangements and types of grain/phase boundaries, may give rise to inhomogeneous material properties. The texture also carries with it information on the history of a material's processing, use and misuse. A knowledge of the texture is a prerequisite for all quantitative techniques of materials characterization, and is based upon the interpretation of diffraction-peak intensities. It is also necessary to model the relationships between microstructural features and physical or mechanical properties. Therefore, the texture is of great value for quality control in a wide range of industrial applications, and in basic materials research.

Volume is indexed by Thomson Reuters CPCI-S (WoS). Preferred crystal orientations and their statistical distribution – the polycrystalline 'texture' – are of major scientific interest and are of great importance in a wide range of industrial applications. The aim of this book is to monitor the rapid progress made in this field during the last few years. Texture analysis has expanded beyond its traditional domain of cubic metals and alloys to encompass virtually all crystalline, and even partially crystalline, materials - including natural as well as man-made ones such as geological samples, minerals, ceramics, polymers, composites, low-symmetry materials, thin films and layers. The main objectives are to obtain a better understanding and control of the properties of anisotropic materials (as related to bulk, grain or grain boundary structures), recrystallization and grain growth, deformation textures, and correlations between internal stress, composition and texture.

After a brief introduction into crystal plasticity,the fun- damentals of crystallographic textures and plastic anisotro- py, a main topic of this book, are outlined. A large chapter is devoted to formability testing both for bulk metal and sheet metal forming. For the first time testing methods for plastic anisotropy of round bars and tubes are included. A profound survey is given of literature about yield criteria for anisotropic materials up to most recent developments and the calculation of forming limits of anisotropic sheet me- tal. Other chapters are concerned with properties of workpieces after metal forming as well as the fundamentals of the theory of plasticity and finite element simulation of metal forming processes. The book is completed by a collection of tables of international standards for formability testing and of flow curves of metals which are most commonly used in metal forming. It is addressed both to university and industrial readers.