AbstractPlane stress yield loci are derived from an extensive bank of textural data which covers a range of fcc metals and alloys subjected to a wide range of thermomechanical processing operations. Results are given in terms of a parameter Y which describes the shape of the yield locus and corresponds to the ratio of the yield stress at balanced biaxial tension to the yield stress at pure shear. It is found that the yield loci indicative of good formability occur in metal sheets in which textural components are carefully balanced. For high stacking fault energy metals this corresponds to a mixture of cube texture with retained rolling texture components. For low stacking fault energy metals, the mixture is in the form of the brass annealing texture supplemented by components of grain growth texture. Improvements which can be gained in the formability with the latter texture are quite significant, while the former texture is capable only of restoring the formability to isotropic levels.MST/869