Increase the Ressource Efficiency by Evaluation of the Effects of Deep Rolling within the Design and Manufacturing Phase

Car manufacturers are currently facing the same challenge as all manufacturing companies: To increase the resource efficiency associated with their products. However, the demands are somewhat higher for car manufacturers: They must reduce greenhouse gas emission during their cars’ use phase. But it is not enough if only the use phase is adapted, but as a manufacturer, the OEMs must also include the emissions during production into their considerations. The consequence of this will be that the supply chain has to increase the resource efficiency. Resource efficiency can be increased by lightweight design of components. An idea that has been implemented for many years is lightweight construction by using the design of surface integrity. By optimizing surfaces and near surface regions, the service life of dynamically loaded components can be increased by introducing compressive residual stresses. Processes used for this are processes such as deep rolling or machine hammer peening. However, the effects of these processes directly on the reduction of part weight and the resulting effect on the production chain have not been investigated sufficiently. Within this paper, the possibilities of lightweight construction by deep rolling will be investigated based on an experiment and on literature data. For this purpose, dynamic loading tests are carried out on three different component states and thus a weight saving with the same service life is enabled. Subsequently, an evaluation of the material weight reduction is performed. These investigations will be the base for further investigation regarding a possible CO₂ emission reduction along the production chain.