Univ. Prof. Dr. Ing.

Bergs, Thomas

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  • Publication
    Life cycle analysis results for engine blisk LCA
    ( 2024-02-05)
    Fricke, Kilian
    ;
    Bergs, Thomas
    ;
    Ganser, Philipp
    ;
    Seimann, Martin
    Purpose - The aviation industry has seen consistent growth over the past few decades. To maintain its sustainability and competitiveness, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of the environmental impacts across the entire life cycle of the industry, including materials, processes and resources; manufacturing and production; lifetime services; reuse; end-of-life; and recycling. One important component of aircraft engines, integral rotors known as Blisks, are made of high-value metallic alloys that require complex and resource-intensive manufacturing processes. The purpose of this paper is to assess the ecological and economical impacts generated through Blisk production and thereby identify significant ‘hot-spots’. Design/methodology/approach - This paper focuses on the methodology and approach for conducting a full-scale Blisk life cycle assessment (LCA) based on ISO 14040/44. Unlike previous papers in the European Aerospace Science Network series, which focused on the first two stages of LCA, this publication delves into the "life cycle impact assessment" and "interpretation" stages, providing an overview of the life cycle inventory modeling, impact category selection and presenting preliminary LCA results for the Blisk manufacturing process chain. Findings - The result shows that the milled titanium Blisk has a lower CO2 footprint than the milled nickel Blisk, which is less than half of the global warming potential (GWP) of the milled nickel Blisk. A main contributor to GWP arises from raw material production. However, no recycling scenarios were included in the analysis, which will be the topic of further investigations. Originality/value - The originality of this work lies in the detailed ecological assessment of the manufacturing for complex engine components and the derivation of hot spots as well as potential improvements in terms of eco-footprint reduction throughout the products cradle-to-gate cycle. The LCA results serve as a basis for future approaches of process chain optimisation, use of "greener" materials and individual process improvements.
  • Publication
    Energy and Resource Efficiency in Manufacturing
    ( 2023-05-05)
    Bergs, Thomas
    ;
    Barth, Sebastian
    ;
    Beckers, Alexander
    ;
    Dehmer, Alexander
    ;
    Grünert, Golsalves
    ;
    Koch, Anna
    ;
    Prinz, Sebastian
    ;
    Röttger, Jannik
    ;
    Stauder, Lars
    The compatibility of economic and ecological sustainability is increasingly determining the strategies of manufacturing companies. The focus of ecological sustainability is primarily on energy and material efficiency in the company's own production. However, many possibilities that could already be used in the company's own production to re-duce energy consumption and increase material efficiency remain unused. In the me-dium to long term, for an economy in a sustainable society, moreover, cross-company activities will increasingly have to be initiated and become effective. This requires close, product-specific cooperation from all participants along the respective value chains as well as the development and implementation of new sustainability approaches. There-fore, this paper presents current best practices for increasing energy and material effi-ciency in manufacturing. With a view to the potentials of tomorrow as well as the future challenges, promising possibilities and examples for realising the urgently needed cir-cular economy will continue to be highlighted, taking into account different R-cycles based on the digital twin of product and manufacturing.
  • Publication
    Methodology for the selection of manufacturing technology chains based on ecologic and economic performance indicators
    ( 2023)
    Grünert, Gonsalves
    ;
    Grünebaum, Timm
    ;
    Beckers, Alexander
    ;
    Stauder, Lars
    ;
    Barth, Sebastian
    ;
    Bergs, Thomas
    When manufacturing products, it becomes increasingly important to consider ecological factors in addition to conventional key performance indicators such as manufacturing costs, time or quality. The greatest leverage for creating the most sustainable form of product manufacture is in the early stages of technology planning, because emissions can be avoided in the long term through the selection of sustainable technologies. However, there are methods that allow ecological factors to be taken into account during technology planning to supplement the usual key performance indicators, but the level of detail and the applicability are not yet sufficient. In order to support decision makers in the planning and evaluation of technology chains, this paper develops a methodology that supports technology chain selection. For this purpose, an economic-ecological key performance indicator was developed which combines manufacturing costs, material flow costs and environmental impacts determined through life cycle assessment to enable a holistic view.
  • Publication
    Mold protective coatings for precision glass molding
    ( 2022-10-04)
    Friedrichs, Marcel
    ;
    Grunwald, Tim
    ;
    Bergs, Thomas
    Precision Glass Molding (PGM) is a replicative technology to manufacture glass lenses with complex geometries such as aspheres, freeform-optics or lens arrays. During the PGM process, a glass preform is heated until the viscous state and afterwards pressed into the desired shape using two high-precise molds. This process enables the direct and efficient manufacture of high shape accuracy and surface quality optics without any mechanic post-processing step. The efficiency of the PGM process depends primarily on the lifetime of the high-precision molds made of cemented tungsten carbide. During each molding cycle, the molds have to withstand severe thermo-chemical and thermo-mechanical loads. Using protective coatings, the lifetime of the molds can be increased. In this study, the performances of a diamond-like carbon (DLC) and a precious metal alloy coating, namely PtIr, were evaluated in an industrial glass molding machine. The degradation mechanisms of the coatings were analyzed using surface characterization such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). At this, phenomena such as glass adhesion and coating disintegration were observed.
  • Publication
    Life Cycle Inventories for Engine Blisk LCA
    ( 2022)
    Fricke, Kilian
    ;
    Bergs, Thomas
    ;
    Ganser, Philipp
    ;
    Gierlings, Sascha
    ;
    Albano, Joana
    The aviation industry has been growing continuously over the past decades. To ensure sustainability and competitiveness for the aviation industry sector, a full understanding of the environmental impacts is required, not only during use phase but along the entire life cycle, including “Materials”, “Processes and Resources”, “Manufacturing and Production”, “Lifetime Services” as well as “Reuse, End-of-Life and Recycling”. Core engine components, such as integral rotors (Blisks), are comprised of high value metallic alloys that require complex and resource consuming manufacturing processes. This paper will introduce an approach for Life-Cy-cle-Inventory data acquisition during Blisk manufacturing as basis for a Life-Cycle-Assessment (LCA) according to ISO 14040. A particular focus will be set on the data quality and confidence level regarding measuring, acquisition, and analysis of in- and output flows within the Blisk manufacturing process chain in scope. This includes the stages of material generation, forming processes, heat treatments, machining, surface treatments and quality assurance. A greater emphasis is drawn to selected variations on mechanical machining processes. On this basis, first results of an LCA for Blisk-manufacturing will be presented.
  • Publication
    Knowledge-Based Process Design Optimization in Blisk Manufacturing
    ( 2022)
    Landwehr, Markus
    ;
    Ganser, Philipp
    ;
    Vinogradov, Georg
    ;
    Bergs, Thomas
    The manufacturing process of blade-integrated disks (blisks) represents one of the most challenging tasks in turbomachinery manufacturing. The requirement is to machine complex, thin-walled blade geometries with high aspect ratios made of difficult-to-cut materials. In addition, extremely tight tolerances are required, since the smallest deviations can lead to a reduction in efficiency of the blisk in the later use. Nowadays, the ramp-up phase for the manufacturing of a new blisk is time and cost-intensive. To find a suitable manufacturing process that meets the required tolerances of the blisk, many experimental tests with different process parameters and strategies are necessary. The used approach is often trial and error, which offers limited testing opportunities, is time-consuming and waste of resources. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop a knowledge-based process design optimization in blisk manufacturing. For this purpose, this paper picks up the results from our previous work. Based on these results, an experimental validation of the two process design tasks “number of blocks” and “block transition” is conducted. As part of the validation, the results of machining tests on a demonstrator blisk made of Inconel 718 are presented and discussed.
  • Publication
    Knowledge-Based Process Design Optimisation in Blisk Manufacturing
    ( 2022)
    Landwehr, Markus
    ;
    Ganser, Philipp
    ;
    Vinogradov, Georg
    ;
    Bergs, Thomas
    The manufacturing process of blade-integrated disks (blisks) represents one of the most challenging tasks in turbomachinery manufacturing. The requirement is to machine complex, thin-walled blade geometries with high aspect ratios made of difficult-to-cut materials. In addition, extremely tight tolerances are required, since the smallest deviations can lead to a reduction in efficiency of the blisk in the later use. Nowadays, the ramp-up phase for the manufacturing of a new blisk is time and cost intensive. To find a suitable manufacturing process that meets the required tolerances of the blisk, many experimental tests with different process parameters and strategies are necessary. The used approach is often trial and error which offers limited testing opportunities, is time consuming and wastes resources. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop a knowledge-based process design optimization in blisk manufacturing. For this purpose, this paper picks up the results from our previous work. Based on these results, an experimental validation of the two process design tasks "number of blocks"and "block transition"is conducted. As part of the validation, the results of machining tests on a demonstrator blisk made of Inconel 718 are presented and discussed.