Energy Efficient Manufacturing

Chapter 4Energy Reduction in Manufacturing via Incremental Forming and Surface Microtexturing

Jian Cao¹* and Rajiv Malhotra²

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

²Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA

*Corresponding author: [e-mail]

Abstract

Energy reduction via manufacturing can be achieved in two ways. The first is the creation of new processes that inherently reduce energy consumption for fabrication of a part, as compared to existing processes. One such process, incremental forming, is a die-less sheet metal forming process that reduces the energy consumption for low volume batch production or rapid prototyping of sheet metal parts. The increased process flexibility, lower forming forces, and greater formability of the sheet metal have led to significant interest in this process in the last decade. The first part of this chapter (Section 4.1) will introduce the fundamentals of incremental forming including the general concept, geometric accuracy, surface finish, formability prediction, and energy consumption as compared to conventional forming processes. The second method for creating energy savings via manufacturing is to use manufacturing as an enabling technology. Surface microtexturing has been shown to result in energy savings by enabling reduced friction at moving interfaces and by prolonging tool life. The second part of this chapter, Section 4.2, will ...