• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.439-446
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• 2002

This study presents a new computational model to analyze the grain deformation in a polycrystalline aggregate in a discrete manner and based directly in the underlying physical micro-mechanisms. When scaling down a metal forming process, the dimensions of the workpiece decrease but the microstructure of the workpiece remains the similar. Since the dimensions of the workpiece are very small, the microstructure especially the grain size will play an important role in micro forming, which is called size effects. As a result, specific characteristics have to be considered for the numerical analysis. The grains and grain boundary elements are introduced to model individual grains and grain boundary facets, respectively, to consider the size effects in the micro forming. The constitutive description of the grain elements accounts for the rigid-plastic and the grain boundary elements for visco-elastic relationships. The capability of the proposed approach is demonstrated through application of grain element and grain boundary element in the micro forming.