Abstract: Metallic components with large-area micro/meso functional surface structures have been increasingly utilized in various industrial fields. Relevant research on mass production methods for metallic parts with surface micro/meso features has attracted much attention from both industrial and academic communities. A roll-to-plate(R2P) imprinting process is proposed for efficiently and economically fabricating micro/meso features on the surface of the thin metal sheet. However, the microforming ability of material is notably influenced by the die cavity dimensions and the grain size of metal material with miniaturization of feature sizes. Finite element simulations are conducted to study the general effects of die cavity dimensions(width, spacing, and fillet radius) and grain size on the formation of features. The experiments using pure copper specimens are conducted to confirm the findings from the simulation and to validate the feasibility of the process. The investigation results show that the width and grain size have significant effects on the feature formation at the micro/meso scale. The microforming ability is enhanced with the increase of cavity dimension or grain size becoming larger when the grain size is smaller than the groove width.

Key words: Functional surface microfeature, Micro/meso scale forming, Roll-to-plate(R2P) imprinting process, Size effects