Effect of continuity of annealing time on the recrystallization behavior of Al-Mg-Mn-Sc-Zr alloy

•Comparing the recrystallization behavior of annealing the sample under continuous time and under discontinuous time.•Combining the EBSD results and the TEM results to illustrate the difference of the recrystallization.•Adding a group of control samples to analyze the recrystallization mechanism. Recrystallization behavior of Al-Mg-Mn-Sc-Zr alloy have been studied after two different annealing ways. The one way is keeping the cold rolling plate of the alloy in 550 °C for a continuous time (CT). The other way is putting the alloy plate into the salt bath furnace at 550 °C for 10S then quenching it into water and repeating this process. The annealing time is discontinuous (DT). Results show that grains in the CT sample grow up with the increase of annealing time but the grains in the DT sample are still very fine. The recrystallization fraction of the CT sample increases with the rise of annealing time. However, in the DT sample, the recrystallization fraction is low. Much grains are maintained in substructure state. The recrystallization result is due to the pinning effect of the Al3(Sc, Zr) particles.