Investigation of energy management topologies for forming presses with electro hydrostatic drivetrains

Recent Power On Demand approaches, realized by using speed and/or displacement variable pump units, led to a significant increase of energy efficiency on hydraulic forming presses. In this paper we follow up on this development by laying the focus on the energy management and storage design of such machinery. With a derived fluidtronical model, we compare five different topologies that supply and manage the power flow for a forming press with die cushion. Our evaluation criteria are: energy consumption, minimization of the infeed power, and qualitative costs. For a representative forming cycle, the losses occurring on each of the drivetrain components and the power electronics accessory are derived in detail. We expect that this research will lead to deeper investigation of more intelligent energy management systems that use multiple storages in an optimal way and further learn and adapt during operation.