Energy Efficiency Process for Manufacturing Crank Shaft

Abstract

Increasing energy efficiency of the manufacturing process is one of the solutions to resolve the ecological issues, save manufacturing cost, and reduce environmental impacts. In crank shafts manufacturing process chain, the potential of energy saving is great due to the induction heating line and heat loss from the process. This paper proposes the method to increase energy efficiency of induction heating line which spends most of the energy in a whole crankshaft manufacturing process. To reduce the heat loss from work piece, an insulating system was designed through the analysis of heat flow. The optimization of the heating parameters was done based on the simulation model with the multi criteria optimization method. In addition, this work also addresses a concept of holistic optimization approach to decrease energy consumption in the manufacturing process of crankshaft. The optimization approach in conjunction with design of experiment, analytical method, regression, and the robust optimization algorithm was applied in order to systematically optimize manufacturing processes. The optimization process aims to identify significant process parameters, determine potential solutions, and obtain optimal parameters. The energy flow of sub-process, including heating line, shearing, and forging is carried out in terms of a holistic approach, i.e. in consideration of the interrelationship between energy consumption and relevant criteria (cycle time, manufacturing costs, product quality). The optimized results show that the induction heating line can increase 14.8% in energy efficiency, of which 9% is due to the effect of insulating cover and 5.8% is due to process parameter optimization and the forging process chain can reduce approximately 10% in energy consumption. This paper contributes to improve the energy efficiency of the crank shafts manufacturing process.