Energetic evaluation of press hardening processes

The awareness and commitment to carefully use energy and other resources is increasing, in view of climate change and the shortage of resources. Sustainable practice starts with sustainable production. The press hardening of sheet and tube metal components offers a range of optimization approaches. It becomes clear that a holistic view of the life cycle of components and products is essential. On the one hand, press hardening manufacturing process is significantly more energy demanding than conventional deep drawing process. On the other hand, they are also associated with significant energy and life cycle savings in the utilization phase of the manufactured product. The main focus of this work was on the visualization of energy consumption as well as the development of innovative energy-efficient process chains for press hardening. Based on a technological analysis, the investigated process chains were energetically evaluated and approaches to improve the energy balance were deduced.