Abstract

Saving energy and low carbon strategy has becoming the future trend of manufacturing industry. Cutting process in mechanical manufacturing has the characteristics of heavy energy consumption and complex process. The estimation and evaluation of energy consumption and energy efficiency of cutting process are hot topics in research groups and industry. The energy consumption of cutting process is determined by the load, which is related to the cutting parameters under fixed cutting systems, while the cutting parameter might change with the cutting process and material. Based on the relationship between energy consumption and cutting characteristics and the quality requirements, the cutting specific energy u(t) = P(t)/M(t), which is varies with time is proposed to evaluate the energy consumption of various cutting parameters under complex machining processes. The influence of cutting parameters on cutting energy consumption is studied by experiments and a calculation method is proposed to calculate cutting energy consumption. Finally, a case study of complex curve machining in mold manufacturing is illustrated to prove the effectiveness of the proposed evaluation method.