The aim of this study is to understand and to model, on physical bases, metallurgical and mechanical phenomena that induce changes in crystallographic textures. Microscopic and textural characterizations have been performed on an IF steel during its industrial process: in the hot band state, then after cold rolling and finally after recrystallisation. Parallel to this experimental study, the texture prediction is performed with a deformation model in order to couple these results with a recrystallisation model. This concerns principally the determination of the key parameters against nucleation that can be predicted by a model using a self-consistent approach. Deformation heterogeneities characterization like the modeling has been realized at different scales. The parameters extracted from experimental work, more particularly with EBSD analyses (in a SEM and in a TEM), allow an estimation of the fragmentation that occurs in some specific crystallographic orientations. These results are in accordance with the stored energy estimation realized by XRD with, in average, two times more energy in the γ-fibre grains than in the α-fibre grains after high cold-rolling levels, but with low differences for low thickness reductions. A hierarchy of the fragmentation F is proposed such as F{100} < F{112} < F{111} < F{111} < F{554} . Comparisons between experiences and modeling have followed these analyses. The γ-fibre fragmentation is explained by a number of dislocations walls created during the deformation more important than in the α-fibre. Moreover, misorientations axes of these two fibres are the transverse direction axis for the first steps of the deformation but are different after 65% of thickness reduction. The rotation occurs then along the rolling direction axis reduction for the α- fibre while it occurs along the normal direction axis for the γ-fibre after 90% thickness reduction.
