Comprehensive energy-saving method for sheet metal forming

An energy-saving and environment-friendly manufacturing process is essential to address the large energy and resource consumption in manufacturing. Sheet metal forming is an important manufacturing process and is widely used in automobile and aviation industries. Sheet metal forming is also an energy-intensive process in manufacturing and consumes a large amount of energy because of its low energy efficiency. In this study, a comprehensive energy-saving method was proposed to reduce the energy consumption and improve the energy efficiency of sheet metal forming. On the basis of the developed process energy models of sheet metal forming, a novel process optimization method was proposed to reduce the process energy consumption of metal forming parts without sacrificing their forming quality. The proposed process optimization method was melded with previous energy-matching control method of forming equipment to further decrease the energy consumption in sheet metal forming. The comprehensive energy-saving method for sheet metal forming was integrally applied to a stamping process chain. Results show that the energy consumption can be decreased by 37% compared with the original stamping process chain. Therefore, the proposed method shows significant energy-saving potential.