Well collimated, high energy X-rays of 90keV from synchrotron sources have been used to
study metals undergoing plastic deformation in situ, in real time and in the bulk of the
materials. The spottiness of the Debye–Scherrer rings, showing reflections from individual
crystallites, is analyzed to obtain grain statistics, mosaic spread and grain orientation. Upon
cold deformation, coarse grained materials show fingerprints of subgrain formation, grain
rotation, grain refinement and the evolution from a single grain into the asymptotic texture …

The mechanical properties of a metallic product depend strongly on both phase composition
and microstructure of a polycrystalline product and large development efforts for the design
of novel materials deal with these issues. Besides the physical parameters, the artwork is to
perform the right thermo-mechanical processing, which for highly designed materials can be
very sophisticated. Therefore, thermo-mechanical simulators are widely used in industry and
laboratories (Figure 1). They not only allow to obtain experimental results for fundamental …