A Decision-support Model to Select Forming Principle of Part for Sustainable Manufacturing

This article provides a model for helping to select which forming principle could save more energy when processing a metallic part. This model mainly makes use of material efficiency as the focus of comparison for energy consumption between additive manufacturing and subtractive manufacturing. It considers the whole manufacturing life cycle including material production, transportation, manufacturing processes and recycling. The key variable used to select the forming principle in this paper is the part volume ratio, that is, the volume fraction of the specific part in the bounding box. And a critical volume fraction could be calculated. Additive manufacturing shows higher energy efficiency while the volume fractions of that is less than the critical value. This paper also provides a case study about the energy consumption of three Ti-6Al-4V parts, and shows how to select appropriate forming principle for parts made of the Ti-6Al-4V alloy. The decision-support model based on energy consumption developed in this paper provides a decision-making tool for planning design. And it made a certain meaning in theoretical research for selecting forming principles, although there are some exceptional limitations and flaws of this model.