The conventional rolling of magnesium alloy with a single pass and large reduction will cause severe edge cracking. The sheet without cracks can be achieved by limited width rolling. The microstructure evolution of the sheet with cracks after conventional rolling and the sheet without cracks after limited width rolling is explored, and an effective mechanism for solving edge cracks is proposed. Conventional rolling can fully develop twin evolution due to high deformation, and three stages of twinning evolution can be observed and the secondary twins easily become the nucleation points of micro cracks, resulting in a large number of cracks propagating along the twin lamellae. Cracks terminate at dislocation accumulation because the accumulation of a large number of dislocations can hinder propagation. Dislocation shearing of twins to eliminate the high localization caused by twins and induce the tensile twins to weaken the basal surface texture provides an effective plastic deformation mechanism of crack inhibition, which is useful for expanding the engineering application of magnesium alloy rolled sheets.
Keywords: dislocation; lattice distortion; shear; texture; twinning deformation.