Material behavior modelling in micro/meso-scale forming process with considering size/scale effects

Size effects make most know-how of traditional macro forming inappropriate for the micro forming process. Material behavior greatly varies in micro forming process with the decreasing of the scale. The purposes of this paper are to analyze the influence of material size effects and establish a martial model in micro/meso-scale. By combining surface model with theories of single crystal and polycrystal, a mixed material model, which contains a size dependent term and a size independent term, is proposed in this paper. It finds that the flow stress of material in micro/meso-scale is between that of single crystal model (lower bound) and polycrystall model (upper bound). Based on a mixed material model, the influence of size effects is discussed in both micro bulk forming process and micro sheet forming process. At the end, the validity of the mixed model is approved by comparing the simulations with the experimental results. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.