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It is well established that cold‐drawing of pearlitic wire develops a strong anisotropy due to a preferential <110> orientation of the ferrite phase parallel to the wire axis. The subsequent wire behavior during torsion, which mainly occurs during assembling of drawn wires, is correlated with the texture and its gradient along the wire radius. Although different attempts were made in the past to measure the texture after drawing, it is still challenging since the final wire diameter is on the order of 0.3 mm. The paper presents a simple and robust method to measure the texture gradient by X‐ray diffraction. First, to overcome the problems of a composite sample made of parallel wires, an isotropic reference sample is prepared by cycles of austenite transformation and quenching. The texture gradient is measured at different thicknesses by dissolving the external surface of the wires. This allows the investigation of the first 40 μm of depth. Finally, the results are compared with EBSD measurements on a longitudinal cross‐section to quantify the influence of the drawing conditions: A flat schedule with constant die angles favors a <110> fiber texture with a weak gradient, while increasing the drawing angle for three dies increases the gradient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study which examines the characteristics of stainless steels for exhaust lines of cars. Among the various grades of stainless steels, the ferritic grade is more stable than austenitic or refractory grades. The ferritic grade also exhibits better resistance to cyclic oxidation. Test temperature and the chemical composition of the steel can affect the precipitation of Fe2Nb or Fe2Nb3 intermetallic particles.