Energy Efficiency Optimisation in Heat Treatment Process Design

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools to support design in terms of energy efficiency optimisation are beginning to come into the market, in particular for energy savings and management in buildings, however little has yet been developed for manufacturing. The work here described is related to the enhancement of existing manufacturing process design methodology and tools with a set of ICT components developed allowing process knowledge based design, simulation and optimisation in terms of energy efficiency. In particular the work described is focused on the heat treatment process of steel casting parts. This process design traditionally consists of a suitable predefined temperature-time curve selection based on personal experience and given customer requirements (material and mechanical properties), yet this curve can actually be optimised in terms of energy consumption and maintenance cost, while keeping required mechanical properties.