Many important properties of a polycrystalline material are known to depend on the orientation of the crystallites. The distribution of these orientations is referred to as its texture. During the past decade a remarkable sophistication of experimental methods, of texture determination and texture representation has been achieved, and, at the same time, a fast development of texture applications, for the improvement of materials propert- ies and for investigating the processes underlying the texture formation has taken place. As a consequence of this increasing interest in texture analysis and control in research and practice, world wide conferences on textures of materials were established in order to master the increasing flood of ideas and results. Until now five of such meetings were held, namely in Clausthal (1969), Cracow (1971), Pont-a-Mousson (1973), Cambridge (1975), and in Aachen (1978). The sixth conference of this series will be held in Tokyo. The present two volumes contain the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Con- ference on Textures of Materials (ICOTOM 5).It was held from March 28-31, 1978 at the Institut fUr Allgemeine Metallkunde und Metallphysik of the Rheinisch-Westfiilische Technische Hochschule Aachen. The 150 participating scientists (47 from Germany, 103 from 19 other countries) heard 16 invited and 86 contributed papers. Topics of the conference were all important areas of current research and application: texture analysis, experimental methods, deformation textures, recrystallization textures, transformation tex- tures, textures of minerals, textures in steels, textures in special applications, influence of the texture on physical and mechanical properties.
