ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the size effect in plastic deformation of materials in meso- and microscales. In meso- and microforming, one of the main intrinsic reasons of size effect is the interaction of the scaled-down geometry and the scale-independent factors of materials such as microstructure, surface roughness, asperity. In the traditional forming process, the scale-independent factors are much smaller than the dimensions of the materials to be deformed. Scaling is an accepted strategy to study the multiscaled forming processes and the effect of miniaturization. In metal meso- and microforming, the deformation behavior of materials is influenced by the grain size, grain orientation, and feature size of materials. Hall–Patch model is commonly used for the representation of the grain size effect in meso- and microforming. The modeling studies of size effect based phenomena are summarized and how they affect the process performance is also articulated.
