Material Intrinsic Length in Plastic Strain Gradient Theory and Microbending Process of Metal Foils

In microbending experiments of metal foils an increase of non-dimensional bending moment with decreasing foil thickness has been observed, which indicates the obvious presence of size effects. It is attributed to plastic strain gradient. So a constitutive model taking into account plastic strain gradient together with conventional plastic strain hardening is proposed to analyze the non-dimensional bending moment in microbending process. It is confirmed that the predictions by using the proposed hardening model agree well with the experimental data, while those determined by using conventional elastoplastic model cannot capture such size effects. A semi-empirical expression is reasonable to determine the material intrinsic length as a function of shear modulus, initial yield strength, length of Burger's vector, grain size, and macro geometrical characteristic scale of the specimen.