Decision rules for energy consumption minimization during material removal process in turning

Optimizing energy consumption has become a priority in advanced manufacturing industry due to increasing sustainability and environmental consciousness, resulting in various models to characterize the relationship between cutting parameters and energy consumption for material removal processes. These existing models are subject to a principle, the higher the material removal rate, the lower the specific energy consumption, without considering the effects of cutting parameter combinations at a certain material removal rate. To address this problem in minimizing energy consumption, three tasks are conducted in this paper. First, specific energy consumption is identified as an optimization objective and expressed as a function of spindle rotation speed, cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut. Second, based on the candidate options, decision rules are proposed for selecting optimal cutting parameters to achieve minimum energy consumption. Third, the decision rules are applied with experimental data of rough external turning. This work is expected to assist computer numerical control machine tool practitioners in selecting optimal cutting parameters for minimum energy consumption. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.