Optimizing energy consumption in directed energy deposition-based hybrid additive manufacturing: an integrated modelling and experimental approach

The awareness of energy consumption is gaining much more attention in manufacturing due to its economic and sustainability benefits. Reducing energy consumption in advanced manufacturing processes, like directed energy deposition (DED) manufacturing, is critical for Industry 4.0 and the forthcoming Industry 5.0 since it allows for more economical, sustainable, and environmentally friendly manufacturing approaches. An energy consumption model is needed for quantifying the consumption and predicting the impact of various process parameters in manufacturing. This paper aims to develop an energy consumption model for DED-based hybrid additive manufacturing (HAM) for an Inconel 718 part. The specific energy consumption (SEC) is used while developing the energy consumption of the product manufacturing lifecycle. This study focuses on the analysis to investigate three significant factors (scanning speed, laser power, and feed rate), their interactions’ effects, and whether they have a significant effect on energy consumption. The results suggest that all the factors have a strong influence, but their interaction effects have a weak influence on the energy consumption for HAM. Among the three process parameters, it is found that laser power has the most significant effect on energy consumption. Again, based on the regression analysis, this study also recommends high scanning speed while the laser power and feed rate should be low. Also, idle time has significant energy consumption during the whole HAM process.