Electrically Assisted Manufacturing (EAM) is a recently developed method for materials forming based on the Electro-Plastic Effect (EPE) induced by electric current on the flow properties of the material and enhancing their workability. In this technique, the concept of dislocations/electrons interaction and the localized resistive heating provided by electric current were found to be the main responsible for the observed increase in materials formability. However, the joule heating may hinder the induced EPE, since heat and electricity are contemporarily both present, and separation between these two contributions is mandatory to better understand the solely effect of electricity on plastic flow. The present experimental work on an AISI 316L austenitic stainless steel is aimed to study EPE by separating the effects of current from those of heating during EAM uniaxial tensile test, in order to ascribe the relative contributions.

Realization of final products frequently involves severe bulk deformation steps and, therefore, methods aimed to improve and increase the materials formability are required. In industry, for bulk material forming, a commonly used method is hot working, where deformations are observed at or above recrystallization temperature of the material; alternatively, incremental forming can be employed, in which intermediate cold deformation steps are followed by annealing to restore the material workability [1].