OPTIMIZATION OF PROCESS PARAMETERS IN LASER WELDING OF HASTELLOY C-276 USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK AND GENETIC ALGORITHM

In this paper, an effort is made to determine the optimized parameters in laser welding of Hastelloy C-276 using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Genetic Algorithm (GA). CO 2 Laser welding was performed on a sheet of thickness 1.6[Formula: see text]mm based on Taguchi L27 orthogonal array. Laser power, welding speed and shielding gas flow rate were chosen as input parameters and Bead width, depth of Penetration and Microhardness were measured for assessing the weld quality. ANN was applied for modeling the welding process parameters i.e. heat input, welding speed and gas flow rate. Various learning algorithms such as Batch Back Propagation (BBP), Incremental Back Propagation (IBP), Quick Propagation (QP) and Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) were comprehensively tested for estimating the output parameters and a comparison was also made among them, with respect to prediction accuracy. BBP method was found to be the best learning algorithm. Experimental validation test was performed based on the ANN and GA predicted optimized responses and this welding input parameters provided satisfactory weld metal characteristics in terms of penetration depth, bead width and microhardness.