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- Arc welding (1)
- Energy efficiency (1)
- GMAW (1)
- High power welding (1)
- Human health G. (1)
- LCA (1)
- Laser arc-hybrid welding (1)
- Life cycle assessment (LCA) (1)
- Multi-attribute decision method (1)
- Multi-criteria decision support (1)
Welding is the most important joining technology. In the steel construction
industry, e.g. production of windmill sections, welding accounts for a
main part of the manufacturing costs and resource consumption. Moreover, social
issues attached to welding involve working in dangerous environments. This aspect
has unfortunately been neglected so far, in light of a predominant focus on economics
combined with a lack of suitable assessment methods. In this chapter,
exemplary welding processes are presented that reduce the environmental and
social impacts of thick metal plate welding. Social and environmental Life Cycle
Assessments for a thick metal plate joint are conducted for the purpose of
expressing and analysing the social and environmental impacts of welding.
Furthermore, it is shown that state-of-the-art technologies like Gas Metal Arc
Welding with modified spray arcs and Laser Arc-Hybrid Welding serve to increase
social and environmental performance in contrast to common technologies, and
therefore offer great potential for sustainable manufacturing.
Increasing performance and energy efficiency of Gas Metal Arc Welding by a high power tandem process
(2016)
Standard Gas Metal Arc Welding (Standard GMAW) and a high power Tandem GMAW (TGMAW) process are evaluated with respect to energy efficiency. Current, voltage and overall equipment power are measured and energy consumption is determined. The new key performance indicator Electrical Deposition Efficiency is introduced to reflect the energy efficiency of GMAW processes. Additionally, wallplug efficiency of the equipment is determined in order to identify the overall energy consumption. Results show that energy efficiency as well as economic process performance can be significantly increased by application of the TGMAW process. Furthermore findings indicate that wall-plug efficiency of the equipment is independent of power level and material transfer mode. A metal plate of 30 mm thick structural steel is joined by Standard GMAW and TGMAW to demonstrate the total energy savings for a real weld. Electricity consumption is reduced by more than 20 % using the high power TGMAW process.
Selecting a welding process for a given application is crucial with respect to the sustainability of part manufacturing. Unfortunately, since welding processes are evaluated by a number of criteria, preferences for one or the other process can be contradictory. However, the prevalent procedure of weight assignment for each criterion is subjective and does not provide information about the entire solution space. From the perspective of a decision maker it is important to be able to assess the entire set of possible weightings and answer the question which welding process is optimal for which set of weights. This issue is investigated by means of a weight space partitioning approach. Two welding processes are considered with respect to three criteria that reflect their economic and environmental performance. In order to find the most sustainable welding process the underlying weight space partition is evaluated.