A Brief Overview of Texture and Anisotropy

A brief overview of the state of texture and anisotropy is provided with the motive of inspiring younger readers to engage in this topic. The International Conference on Texture of Materials ICOTOM has been active since 1969 up through the recent 19^th meeting in Japan in 2021. The series initially focused on the problem of reconstructing three-dimensional orientation distributions from diffraction data which typically provided two-dimensional projections in the form of pole figures following the pioneering work of Bunge [1] and Roe [2]. In recent years, the advent of automated orientation mapping in the scanning electron microscope [3] and 3D mapping via synchrotron x-rays [4][5] has provided vastly more detailed data on texture and, crucially, has connected texture more closely with microstructure. Alongside this has been the development of simulation tools to predict texture formation and the anisotropic properties of polycrystalline materials. This has mostly been a accomplished via a mix of mesoscale models, e.g. [6], and more detailed methods that include microstructure. The latter are predominantly based on the finite element method complemented by the spectral method [7].