Micromechanical modelling of size effects in microforming

Abstract

This paper deals with the micromechanical modelling of the size dependent mechanical response of polycrystalline metallic materials at micron scale through a strain gradient crystal plasticity framework. The model is implemented into a Finite Element software as a coupled implicit user element subroutine where the plastic slip and displacement fields are taken as global variables. Uniaxial tensile tests are conducted for microstructures having different number of grains with random orientations in plane strain setting. The influence of the grain size and number on both local and macroscopic behavior of the material is investigated. The model is capable of capturing both size effect due to statistical distribution of the grains and their size taking into account the grain boundary conditions.