A flexible energy behaviors modeling method for machining the workpiece based on feature technology

Characterizing and analyzing energy behaviors are significantly essential to improve energy efficiency for machining the workpieces in modern manufacturing enterprises. This paper proposes a flexible energy behaviors modeling method for machining the workpiece based on feature technology. Energy behaviors for machining the features of the workpiece are flexible, which are affected by the design parameters and the production scenarios of the workpiece. In the method, the multiple factors influencing the energy behaviors are decomposed into Design-related factors, Process-related factors and Machine-related factors. A timed hierarchical object-oriented Petri net (TOPN) methodology is exploited to model the flexible energy behaviors for machining the workpieces. Energy behaviors affected by Design-related factors and Process-related factors are modeled by the data dictionaries and the associated attributes, while energy behaviors related to Machine-related factors are simulated by the structure of the TOPN. The case studies show that the quantitative insight of flexible energy behaviors can be provided efficiently, which can benefit to forecast energy consumption and find some potentials for saving energy during machining the workpiece.