Analysis of microbending of CuZn37 brass foils based on strain gradient hardening models

Microbending experiments of brass foils were conducted and demonstrated clear size effects, i.e., the normalized bending moment increased with the reduction of foil thickness. The experiments were modeled using the classical plasticity model and three strain-gradient plasticity models. A modified Nix–Gao model was proposed to consider the number of twins across the thickness direction in strain hardening. It was found that the proposed model could better predict the normalized bending moment for both fine-grain and coarse-grain foils and the proposed equation for material intrinsic length could better capture the physics of material deformation. Furthermore, micro-hardness distributions in the bending area were measured and obvious lower-hardness region was found in the middle layer of fine-grain foils instead of coarse-grain foils. This indicates that the modified Nix–Gao model and the assumption of fully plastic bending worked better for coarse-grain foils than for fine-grain foils.