Abstract:The friction stir processing (FSP) was employed to modify 1060 Al surface composites reinforced with Pb particles. The scanning electron microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction, nanoindentation and hardness tester were applied to investigate the microstructure, texture and hardness of Al-Pb surface composites. The results show that the Pb particles are mainly distributed at the bottom of processing area, which is effected by gravity and agitation. In the onion ring structure formed by plastic metal convection, there are Pb-rich zone and deformed Al matrix zone. The Pb particles in the Pb-rich zone play an importent role in grain refinement. A small amount of the new Pb particles (about 100 nm) are distributed in the deformed aluminum matrix. The hardness of Pb-rich zone are significantly higher than that of deformed aluminum matrix. Furthermore, crystallographic texture analysis by electron backscatter diffraction indicates that there are different types of texture in different zone in the processing area. At the bottom of the processing zone, there is a strong Cube texture on SZ-AS. SZ-RS has Cube texture and a small amount of (110)<233> deformation texture, and CSZ has weak Cube texture and {111} texture. At the top, there is a strong Goss texture on AS, but the texture on RS is relatively random.