Successful Pass Schedule Design in Open-Die Forging Using Double Deep Q-Learning

Processes, vol. 9, pp. 1084

Abstract

In order to not only produce an open-die forged part with the desired final geometry but to also maintain economic production, precise process planning is necessary. However, due to the incremental forming of the billet, often with several hundred strokes, the process design is arbitrarily complicated and, even today, often only based on experience or simple mathematical models describing the geometry development. Hence, in this paper, fast process models were merged with a double deep Q-learning algorithm to enable a pass schedule design including multi-objective optimization. The presented implementation of a double deep Q-learning algorithm was successfully trained on an industrial-scale forging process and converged stably against high reward values. The generated pass schedules reliably produced the desired final ingot geometry, utilized the available press force well without exceeding plant limits, and, at the same time, minimized the number of passes. Finally, a forging experiment was performed at the institute of metal forming to validate the generated results. Overall, a proof of concept for the pass schedule design in open-die forging via double deep Q-learning was achieved which opens various starting points for future work.

Authors 4

1. Niklas Reinisch corresponding Aachen Institute of Metal Forming

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Metal Forming, RWTH Aachen University, 52072 Aachen, Germany

2. Fridtjof Rudolph Aachen Institute of Metal Forming

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Metal Forming, RWTH Aachen University, 52072 Aachen, Germany

3. David Benjamin Bailly Aachen Institute of Metal Forming

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Metal Forming, RWTH Aachen University, 52072 Aachen, Germany

4. Gerhard Hirt Aachen Institute of Metal Forming

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Metal Forming, RWTH Aachen University, 52072 Aachen, Germany