Energy Efficiency of Sheet Metal Working Processes: Where do we stand today?/Energieeffizienz in Prozessen der Blechumformung – eine aktuelle Standortbestimmung

Due to increasing energy and resource costs at the one hand and upcoming regulations on energy and resource efficiency at the other, a growing interest of machine tool builders to the environmental performance of their machine tools can be observed today. The last decade, academic as well as industrial research groups started to assess the energy demand of discrete part manufacturing processes and indicated a significant potential for improvement [1]. In contrast to conventional machining processes (e.g. milling, turning…), (sheet) metal forming processes are still less well documented in terms of their energy demand [2]. In consequence, potential energy efficiency improvement measures for these processes are often not yet recognized. This contribution provides a short discussion on energy assessment methods followed by a structured overview of available studies on the energy demand of (sheet) metal forming processes. A range of identified energy efficiency improvement measures, suitable for these processes, is presented and quantified