The desire to miniaturize metallic components for application to, for example, Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) devices has revealed the existence of three types of size effects concerning the mechanical properties: the first is introduced by the measurement technique, the second by an interface dominated microstructure and the third by the reduced physical dimensions of the metallic component.
A path towards developing an understanding of these size effects is by exploiting the synergies between simulation and experiments. In this contribution it will be shown by means of a number of examples how simulations can help in the understanding of experimental results and how they can also form the basis for the development of new experimental techniques, such as in-situ diffraction peak profile analysis at the SLS allowing the characterisation of the elastic and plastic properties of MEMS-candidate materials with physical dimensions of the order of a few microns.