Journal of Materials Processing Technology 184 (2007) 5668

Modeling of TIG welding process using conventional regression analysis and neural network-based approaches
Parikshit Dutta, Dilip Kumar Pratihar
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721 302, India Received 26 May 2006; received in revised form 1 November 2006; accepted 7 November 2006

Abstract Conventional regression analysis was carried out on some experimental data of a tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding process (obtained from published literature), to nd its inputoutput relationships. One thousand training data for neural networks were created at random, by varying the input variables within their respective ranges and the responses were calculated for each combination of input variables by using the response equations obtained through the above conventional regression analysis. The performances of the conventional regression analysis approach, a backpropagation neural network (BPNN) and a genetic-neural system (GA-NN) were compared on some randomly generated test cases (experimental), which are different from the training cases. It is interesting to note that for the said test cases, the NN-based approaches could yield predictions that are more adaptive in nature compared to those of the more conventional regression analysis approach. It could be due to the fact that NN-based approaches are able to bring adaptability, which is missing in the conventional regression analysis. Moreover, GA-NN was found to perform better than the BPNN, in most of the test cases. A BPNN works based on the principle of a steepest descent method, whose solutions have the chance of being trapped at the local minima, whereas in GA-NN, the search for a minimum deviation in prediction, is carried out using a GA. However, their performance depends on the nature of the deviation function. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: TIG welding; Conventional regression analysis; BPNN; GA-NN

1. Introduction To ensure both high productivity as well as good quality of the products, a manufacturing process is to be automated. In order to automate a process, a proper model has to be constructed and tested before implementing for on-line control. This paper deals with modeling of a tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding process. There is a natural quest of the researchers to establish inputoutput relationships of a process. Rosenthal [1] studied the temperature distributions on an innite sheet, due to a moving point heat source considering the heat dissipation by conduction. His analysis could be related to arc welding after making a number of assumptions. However, he never tried to relate his theoretical solution to the weld bead geometry, which was attempted later on by Roberts and Wells [2]. Later on, a considerable amount of work have been carried out on analytical modeling of welding process by various investigators. In this connection, the work of Bhadeshia [3] is worth mentioning. A
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 3222 282992; fax: +91 3222 282278. E-mail addresses: pdutta 01@mech.iitkgp.ernet.in (P. Dutta), dkpra@mech.iitkgp.ernet.in (D.K. Pratihar). 0924-0136/$ see front matter 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2006.11.004

model was developed by Bhadeshia et al. [4] to study the process of micro-structure formation in low-alloy steel weld deposits. Svensson et al. [5] carried out an analysis of cooling curves for the fusion zone of steel weld deposits. The cooling curves were obtained for a wide range of welding current, voltage, speed and inter-pass temperature. Moreover, Bhadeshia [6] developed the model of phase transformations and micro-structure formation in steel welds. Two-dimensional axi-symmetric nite element analysis of conduction heat ow in laser spot formation was done by De et al. [7]. They could also predict the cooling rate and micro-structure formation in laser spot welds [8]. It might be difcult to model a complicated process like welding analytically. Realizing this fact, several attempts were made by various investigators to model the welding process by using some conventional regression analysis approaches. Both the linear as well as non-linear conventional regression analyzes had been carried out in the past, based on the experimental data collected in a particular fashion (e.g., full factorial design of experiments, fractional factorial design of experiments). Some of these works are mentioned below. Yang et al. [9] used a non-linear regression analysis for modeling a submerged arc welding process. Murugan et al. [10] utilized a response surface methodology to

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establish the relationships between the input process parameters and bead geometric parameters, in case of a submerged arc welding process. Tarng and Yang [11] applied the Taguchi method, to carry out optimization of weld bead geometry in a gas tungsten arc welding. Lee and Rhee [12] conducted multiple regression analysis to perform both forward (i.e., from process parameters to weld bead geometric parameters) as well as backward (i.e., from bead geometric parameters to process parameters) mappings, in case of a gas metal arc welding process. Kim et al. [13] derived both linear as well as non-linear multiple regression equations to establish the relationships between the process variables and bead penetration for a robotic CO2 arc welding process. Several trials had been made by various researchers to model the welding processes using articial neural networks (ANNs). Some of their works are discussed below. Anderson et al. [14] used the ANN to model an arc welding process and concluded that it can provide an accuracy in prediction comparable to that of other conventional control systems. Cook et al. [15] successfully developed an ANN model to investigate three areas of welding analysis, viz. process modeling, control and quality of weld beads. To relate input process parameters and weld bead geometric parameters in TIG welding, an attempt was made by Juang et al. [16] by using both the back-propagation as well as counter-propagation networks. They concluded that the back-propagation algorithm has better learning ability, whereas the counter-propagation algorithm has better generalization ability. Wu et al. [17] developed a self-organizing map (SOM), for monitoring and quality evaluation in a gas metal arc welding process. More recently, Nagesh and Datta [18] developed a back-propagation neural network, to establish the relationships between the process parameters and weld bead geometric parameters, in a shielded metal arc welding process. Backpropagation neural network (BPNN) had been widely used to model the welding processes. But, the chance of its solutions getting trapped into the local minima is high, as it works based on the principle of a steepest descent method. To overcome this difculty, a genetic algorithm (GA) [19] may be utilized (in place of the steepest descent method), along with the feed forward NN, which may be termed as a genetic-neural system (GA-NN). In the present paper, a TIG welding process has been modeled by using a conventional linear regression technique, a BPNN and a GA-NN and their performances are compared using some test cases. The rest of the text has been organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the bead geometric parameters obtained in a TIG welding process. Section 3 explains the modeling schemes using three different approachesconventional regression analysis,
Table 1 Input welding parameters and their ranges Input process parameters Welding speed Wire feed rate % cleaning Gap Current Units cm/min cm/min mm A Notation A B C D E

Fig. 1. A schematic diagram showing the weld bead geometric parameters.

Fig. 2. Input and output variables of the TIG welding process.

back-propagation neural network and genetic-neural system. Results are discussed in Section 4. Some conclusions are made in Section 5. 2. Inputoutput data set of TIG welding process Tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding is one of the most popular arc welding processes, in which the arc is generated between a non-consumable tungsten electrode and the work-piece, and the molten metal is protected from the atmosphere by using the shielding of an inert gas like argon or helium. Fig. 1 shows the bead geometric parameters in TIG welding process. Mechanical properties of the weld bead depend on its geometric parameters, which in turn, are dependent on the input process parameters. Fig. 2 shows a schematic diagram indicating the inputs (namely, welding speed A, wire feed rate B, % cleaning C, gap D, welding current E) and weld bead geometric parameters (such as front height FH, front width FW, back height BH and back width BW), in a TIG welding process. The ranges of the input process parameters considered for the purpose of analysis are shown in Table 1. A full-factorial design of experiments (DOE) [20] has been adopted in the present work. As there are ve input process parameters and two levels of values have been considered for each input variable, experiments are to be conducted for 25 = 32 combinations of them. Table 2 shows the values of the responses for the above 32 combinations of the input

Maximum value, + 46 2.5 70 3.2 110

Minimum value, 24 1.5 30 2.4 80

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Table 2 Data (as per full factorial DOE) used to carry out regression analysis S. no. Treatment combination Level of the factors, A, B, C, D, E Responses Y values FH (mm) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 1 A B C D E AB AC AD AE BC BD BE CD CE DE ABC ABD ABE ACD ACE ADE BCD BCE BDE CDE ABCD ABCE ABDE ACDE BCDE ABCDE + + + + + ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ +++++ 0.149 0.357 0.155 0.179 0.027 0.599 0.390 0.088 0.168 0.217 0.129 0.099 0.232 0.306 0.254 0.745 0.380 0.487 0.010 0.090 0.249 0.339 0.077 0.623 0.557 0.683 0.394 0.201 0.074 0.396 0.617 0.358 FW (mm) 6.090 4.982 6.676 7.432 6.411 11.348 4.780 5.020 4.898 6.092 7.009 6.824 9.338 7.287 11.237 11.491 5.231 4.992 6.396 4.423 7.719 7.335 7.460 11.767 12.348 12.946 5.337 7.052 6.863 7.633 12.533 7.759 BH (mm) 0.672 0.001 0.743 0.593 0.412 0.805 0.062 0.281 0.277 0.359 0.878 0.803 0.866 0.630 0.470 1.100 0.397 0.139 0.536 0.420 0.492 0.619 0.820 1.128 1.139 0.945 0.378 0.658 0.484 0.458 1.084 0.798 BW 5.664 2.255 5.960 7.058 5.197 11.679 1.330 3.302 2.998 6.419 6.989 5.732 10.611 6.895 12.000 11.848 2.817 1.600 6.197 3.172 7.706 7.520 7.809 12.860 12.403 13.921 3.041 7.480 6.072 7.601 13.346 7.917

variables. This table has been prepared based on the data available in the literature [16]. It is important to mention that the replicate values (repeatability) of the responses for each of the input combinations are not available in the above literature. It is also important to mention that another set of 36 data (refer to Table 3) have been collected from the above literature [16], for the purpose of testing the models. It is important to mention that the above test cases were obtained through the real experiments [16]. 3. Modeling of the process To determine inputoutput relationships in the TIG welding process, both conventional regression analysis as well as neural network (NN)-based approaches have been developed, which are explained below. 3.1. Conventional regression analysis The following steps are to be considered, to carry out regression analysis for the purpose of developing each response equation as a function of several input process parameters: identication of input and output variables of a process, determination of the range for each variable, selection of a design of experiments, such as full factorial design and fractional factorial design,

data collection by conducting the experiment, developing mathematical model to derive the response equations, conducting signicance test, to check the contributions of main factors and their interaction terms, checking the model adequacy, performance testing of the model using test cases. To determine a response equation, a conventional linear regression model (considering the main factors and their interaction terms) can be considered, as given below: Y = b 0 + b 1 X 1 + b 2 X 2 + b 3 X 3 + b 4 X 4 + b 5 X5 + b12 X1 X2 + b13 X1 X3 + b14 X1 X4 + b15 X1 X5 + b23 X2 X3 + b24 X2 X4 + b25 X2 X5 + b34 X3 X4 + b35 X3 X5 + b45 X4 X5 + b123 X1 X2 X3 + b124 X1 X2 X4 + b125 X1 X2 X5 + b134 X1 X3 X4 + b135 X1 X3 X5 + b145 X1 X4 X5 + b234 X2 X3 X4 + b235 X2 X3 X5 + b245 X2 X4 X5 + b345 X3 X4 X5 + b1234 X1 X2 X3 X4 + b1235 X1 X2 X3 X5 + b1245 X1 X2 X4 X5 + B1345 X1 X3 X4 X5 + b2345 X2 X3 X4 X5 + b12345 X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 ,

(1)

P. Dutta, D.K. Pratihar / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 184 (2007) 5668 Table 3 Thirty-six sets of test data S. no. Inputs A (cm/min) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 35 35 35 35 35 35 35 35 35 35 35 35 46 46 46 46 46 46 46 46 46 46 46 46 B (cm/min) 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 C (%) 30 30 70 70 30 30 70 70 30 30 70 70 30 30 70 70 30 30 70 70 30 30 70 70 30 30 70 70 30 30 70 70 30 30 70 70 D (mm) 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 2.4 3.2 E (A) 80 80 80 80 95 95 95 95 110 110 110 110 80 80 80 80 95 95 95 95 110 110 110 110 80 80 80 80 95 95 95 95 110 110 110 110 Outputs FH (mm) 0.066 0.114 0.213 0.034 0.167 0.296 0.219 0.448 0.281 0.452 0.651 0.74 0.144 0.224 0.023 0.041 0.094 0.154 0.179 0.005 0.433 0.449 0.396 0.553 0.454 0.193 0.023 0.219 0.057 0.155 0.189 0.182 0.368 0.154 0.35 0.225 FW (mm) 6.123 5.979 7.424 7.516 8.481 8.928 9.677 10.523 10.871 10.830 13.986 12.273 5.474 5.449 5.758 5.758 6.665 7.402 7.614 7.506 8.011 8.473 9.652 9.773 5.581 4.645 5.646 5.538 5.600 6.002 5.859 6.124 6.927 6.877 7.630 7.553 BH (mm) 0.801 0.682 0.806 0.557 0.713 0.807 0.688 1.005 0.713 0.803 1.090 1.148 0.425 0.379 0.515 0.540 0.613 0.564 0.610 0.457 0.868 0.780 0.782 0.847 0.315 0.332 0.584 0.363 0.495 0.351 0.729 0.569 0.748 0.539 0.650 0.557

59

BW (mm) 5.541 4.633 7.026 7.480 8.340 8.640 9.717 11.088 11.142 11.370 14.146 12.712 5.057 3.884 4.970 4.768 6.304 7.440 7.557 7.310 8.047 8.466 10.277 10.427 3.046 2.810 4.034 2.857 4.836 4.922 5.201 5.299 6.775 6.335 7.869 7.707

where Xi s represent the coded values of the input variables, Y indicates the response, b0 , b1 , . . . , b12345 represent the coefcients, whose values are to be determined using the least square technique. The above response equation expressed in terms of the coded values of the variables is to be written in terms of the actual values of the variables. The relationship between the coded and actual values of a variable can be expressed as follows: coded value = actual value average value . average variation level

3.2. Back-propagation neural network [21] The proposed architecture of neural network (NN) consists of three layersinput layer, hidden layer and output layer. Fig. 3 shows the schematic diagram of the NN used to model the TIG welding process. Five inputs (i.e., J = 5), namely welding speed, wire feed rate, % cleaning, gap and welding current, were fed to the network. The hidden layer contains K neurons, a suitable value of K is to be selected through a careful parametric study. The output layer consists of four neurons (i.e., M = 4),

Fig. 3. A schematic diagram showing the neural network used to model the TIG welding process.

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Step 1: Input layer computation: The output of jth neuron lying on the input layer can be determined as follows: OIj = ea1 (IIj +b) ea1 (IIj +b) , ea1 (IIj +b) + ea1 (IIj +b) (2)

Fig. 4. A schematic diagram showing a specic neuron in each layer.

where a1 is the constant of transfer function, b represents the bias value and IIj indicates input of jth neuron lying on the input layer. Step 2: Hidden layer computation: The input of kth neuron lying on the hidden layer can be computed as follows:
J

IHk =
j=1

OIj vjk + b,

(3)

where vjk indicates the connecting weight between jth neuron of input layer and kth neuron of hidden layer. Now, the output of kth hidden neuron can be determined like the following: OHk = ea2 (IHk +b) ea2 (IHk +b) , ea2 (IHk +b) + ea2 (IHk +b) (4)

where a2 is the constant of transfer function, b represents the bias value and IHk indicates input of kth neuron lying on the hidden layer. Step 3: Output layer computation: The input of mth neuron lying on the output layer can be calculated as follows:
K

Fig. 5. Flowchart of the GA-NN system.

IOm =
k=1

OHk wkm + b,

(5)

to represent four outputs, viz. FH, FW, BH and BW. Transfer functions of all the neurons were assumed to be tan-sigmoidal and a xed value of bias b had been added to all the neurons. The connecting weights between the input and hidden layers were represented by [V] and those between the hidden and output layers were denoted by [W]. The values of [V] and [W] lie in the range of 1.0 to 1.0, whose initial values were generated at random. Computation involved in both the forward as well as backward directions is explained below, in brief. 3.2.1. Forward step calculations Fig. 4 shows jth, kth and mth neurons lying on the input, hidden and output layers, respectively. The following steps are to be considered to carry out computation in the forward direction.

where wkm indicates the connecting weight between kth neuron of hidden layer and mth neuron of output layer. The output of mth neuron can be calculated like the following: OOm = ea3 (IOm +b) ea3 (IOm +b) , ea3 (IOm +b) + ea3 (IOm +b) (6)

where a3 is the constant of transfer function, b represents the bias value and IOm indicates input of mth neuron lying on the output layer. This completes the forward step calculations. 3.2.2. Backward step calculations A batch mode of training has been adopted in the present work. Mean squared deviation (MSD denoted by E) in prediction

Fig. 6. Pareto-chart and normal probability plot for the responseFH.

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was calculated as follows: E= 1 S

S s=1

1 M

M m=1

1 s (T Os )2 , Om 2 Om

(7)

where S indicates the number of training cases, M represents s the number of outputs, TOm is the target output of mth neuron lying on the output layer corresponding to sth training case, and

Os represents the calculated output of mth neuron lying on the Om output layer corresponding to sth training case. The connecting weights [V] and [W] were updated to reduce the error E, as explained below. The change in w, i.e., w at tth iteration was calculated like the following: E wkm (t) = (t) + wkm (t 1), (8) wkm

Fig. 7. Results of the parametric study to determine the optimal NN.

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Fig. 7. (Continued ).

where and denote the learning rate and momentum constant, respectively. Now, E/wkm can be determined by using the chain rule of differentiation as given below: E Es Em OOm IOm E = . wkm Es Em OOm IOm wkm (9)

Similarly, the change in v, i.e., mined as follows:

v at tth iteration was deter-

vjk (t) =

E (t) + vjk (t 1), vjk

(10)

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where E/vjk = (1/M) M (Em /vjk ). Now, Em /vjk m=1 can be calculated as follows: Em Em Ems OOm IOm OHk IHk = . vjk Ems OOm IOm OHk IHk vjk 3.3. Genetic-neural system (GA-NN) In genetic-neural (GA-NN) system [22], an optimal network was evolved by minimizing the deviation in prediction of the outputs, using a genetic algorithm (GA) (in place of a steepest descent method utilized in BPNN). A GA-string carries information of the NN, such as weight values[V], [W], coefcients of transfer functions used in input, hidden and output layers, bias value, which will look as follows: 1001101011 0100110101 1100101001 0110110100
v1,1 v5,K w1,1 wK,4

mean squared deviation E in prediction of the responses, and was represented by using the following expression: E= 1 S
S s=1

(11)

1 M

M m=1

1 s (T Os )2 , Om 2 Om

(12)

where the symbols carry the same meaning as described earlier. The tness values were determined for all the strings lying in the GA-population. The population of GA-strings (i.e., neural networks) was then modied by using the operators reproduction, crossover and mutation. 4. Results and discussion Results of the conventional regression analysis, backpropagation neural network and genetic-neural system, used to establish inputoutput relationships in TIG welding process, are shown and discussed below. Conventional regression analysis was carried out by using the data collected as per full factorial DOE (refer to Table 2). Four different responses (i.e., FH, FW, BH, BW) were found to be as follows, in the un-coded form: FH = 17.2504 + 0.62018A + 4.6762B + 0.086647C + 7.4479D + 0.043108E 0.18695AB 0.005792AC 0.22099AD 0.0029123AE + 0.0018129BC 1.8396BD + 0.019139BE 0.058577CD + 0.0017885CE 0.035219DE + 0.0014061ABC + 0.062296ABD

110 . . . 1 001 . . . 0 010 . . . 0 100 . . . 1

a1 a2 a3 b

where K indicates the number of neurons lying in the hidden layer. There are 5K and 4K values of [V] and [W], respectively; three values of coefcients of the transfer functions (a1 , a2 and a3 ) and one bias value (i.e., b). It is to be noted that 10-bits were used to represent each of the above real variables. Thus, a population of GA-strings represents a number of candidate NNs (whose number equals to the population size). Fig. 5 shows the schematic diagram of the developed GA-NN system. As the batch mode of training was adopted, the whole training set was passed through a neural network represented by a GA-string. The tness f of a GA-string was made equal to the

Fig. 8. Results of GA-parametric study.

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+ 0.00020568ABE + 0.0022313ACD 6.76 106 ACE + 0.0011409ADE + 0.0060975BCD 0.0013628BCE 0.0030BDE 0.00027533CDE 0.00042377ABCD + 0.0189 103 ABCE 0.0459 103 ABDE 8.76 107 ACDE 0.00037623BCDE 6.87 106 ABCDE, FW = 329.6758 + 8.2539A + 167.1041B + 5.8187C + 101.4624D + 3.9953E 4.0707AB 0.14141AC 2.5489AD 0.099144AE 2.9150BC 54.1378BD 1.9883BE 1.8510CD 0.068644CE 1.2150DE + 0.069989ABC + 1.3175ABD + 0.048568ABE + 0.044112ACD + 0.0016977ACE + 0.03081ADE + 0.93986BCD + 0.034547BCE + 0.6524BDE + 0.022294CDE 0.02226ABCD 0.83924 103 ABCE 103 ACDE 0.015943ABDE 0.54259 (14) 0.011294BCDE + 0.27183 103 ABCDE, (13)

BH = 20.7999 0.38305A 3.5745B + 0.10795C 9.3284D 0.092436E + 0.0058295AB 0.0054309AC + 0.16652AD + 0.00049091AE 0.11145BC + 2.2936BD 0.016822BE 0.009152CD 0.0036834CE + 0.057568DE + 0.0044163ABC 0.023731ABD + 0.0014568ABE + 0.0015578ACD + 0.00012402ACE 0.00055232ADE + 0.026228BCD + 0.0023696BCE 0.0041BDE + 0.00095CDE 0.0013485ABCD 0.0769 103 ABCE 0.00031487ABDE 3.93 105 ACDE 0.00068428BCDE + 0.0250 103 ABCDE, (15)

BW = 179.4354 + 4.1209A + 104.7708B + 4.1113C + 52.8753D + 2.4368E 2.5474AB 0.094617AC 1.2695AD 0.057292AE 2.2272BC 34.1677BD 1.2973BE 1.3856CD

Fig. 9. Scatter plots to study the target vs. predicted values of different responses.

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0.050824CE 0.71979DE + 0.052044ABC + 0.81877ABD + 0.032125ABE + 0.031846ACD + 0.0012161ACE + 0.01818ADE + 0.76844BCD + 0.026839BCE + 0.4353BDE + 0.017557CDE 0.017848ABCD 0.64265 103 ABCE 0.010785ABDE 0.00042119ACDE 0.0093502BCDE + 0.22457 103 ABCDE, (16) where A, B, C, D and E represent different input parameters, namely welding speed, wire feed rate, cleaning percentage, arc gap and welding current, respectively, in the un-coded form. Signicance tests were carried out for each response, to determine the signicant terms by using both the Pareto-chart as well as normal probability plot. Fig. 6 shows the Pareto-chart and normal probability plot for the response FH. It is interesting to note that the main factors A, B, C, E have signicant inuence on FH. Similarly, the response FW depends mainly on the main factors A, C, D, E and the interaction term AE. The main factors A, B, E were found to be signicant for the response BH. The response BW are dependent mainly on A, C, E and AE. It is also to be noted that ANOVA (analysis of variance) could not be carried out, to check the adequacy of the model, as replicates of the responses were not available in the literature [16], for each combination of input process parameters. The performance of conventional regression analysis was tested using some test cases, which is discussed at the end of this section.

During the learning of neural networks, a batch mode of training had been adopted. As the set of 32 inputoutput data (with the help of which the regression analysis had been carried out) might not be sufcient to provide proper training to the network, one thousand inputoutput data had been generated at random by using the above regression equations. Results of the neural network-based approaches developed to model the inputoutput relationships in TIG welding process are stated and explained below. The performance of a back-propagation neural network (BPNN) depends on the quality and quantity of data used in training. It is also dependent on its architecture, connecting weights, learning rate, momentum constant, coefcients of transfer functions (TFs), bias value. To determine an optimal set of the above parameters, a study was carried out, by varying one parameter at a time and keeping the other parameters unaltered. Fig. 7 shows the results of the parametric study conducted to determine the optimal network. In the rst stage, the number of neurons to be lying in the hidden layer was varied in the range of 530, keeping the other parameters, viz. learning rate , momentum constant , coefcient of transfer function of the input neurons a1, coefcient of transfer function of the hidden neurons a2, coefcient of transfer function of the output neurons a3, and bias value xed to 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 and 0.0005, respectively. It is interesting to note that the NN with 22 neurons lying in its hidden layer showed the best performance in terms of mean squared deviation in prediction. Thus, in the second stage and on-wards, the number of hidden neurons was kept xed to 22. In the similar way, the optimal/near-optimal values

Fig. 10. Deviation in prediction of different responses using different approaches.

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of , , a1, a2, a3 and bias value were determined in stages. As the parameters were determined in stages (but not simultaneously), there is no guarantee that the obtained network will be globally optimal but it could be a near-optimal one. The parameters of the optimal network were found to be as follows:
No. of neurons in the hidden layer Learning rate, Momentum constant, Coefcient of TF of the input neurons Coefcient of TF of the hidden neurons Coefcient of TF of the output neurons Bias value 22 0.35 0.40 0.15 1.6 0.90 0.0005

In the proposed genetic-neural (GA-NN) system, the number of hidden neurons had been kept xed to 22 (as found to be

optimal in the previous approach on BPNN). The other parameters, like the coefcients of TFs of the neurons lying on the input, hidden and output layers and the bias value were varied in the ranges (0.01, 2.0), (0.0001, 0.001), respectively, during optimization (training). It is to be noted that the ranges of the above parameters were decided after carrying out a careful study with different values of them. As the performance of a GA depends on its parameters, such as crossover probability (pc ), mutation probability (pm ) and population size, an extensive study was conducted to determine the optimal set of GA-parameters. A uniform crossover scheme with a probability of 0.5 was used and the optimal values of other GA-parameters were decided through a careful study. The probability of mutation pm was varied in the range of 0.1/L to 1.0/L (where L indicates the string length and here it is equal to 2020), after keeping the

Fig. 11. Comparisons of three approaches in terms of % deviation in prediction of different responses.

P. Dutta, D.K. Pratihar / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 184 (2007) 5668 Table 4 The values of average absolute % deviation in prediction of different responses obtained by regression analysis, BPNN and GA-NN Approach Regression analysis BPNN GA-NN FH 544.6 168.7 137.2 FH (after removing some bad cases) 144.1 94.8 56.9 FW 25.1 14.1 11.1 BH 34.1 15.1 14.3

67

BW 36.6 16.2 14.8

other parameters crossover probability pc and population size xed to 0.5 and 180, respectively. The best performance was observed with pm = 1.0/2020. In the second stage of the study, experiments were conducted with different values of population size starting from 50 to 520 and pc and pm were kept xed to 0.5 and 1.0/2020, respectively. Results of the GA-parametric study are shown in Fig. 8. The following GA-parameters were found to give the best performance in terms of the mean squared deviation in prediction of the responses.
Crossover probability, pc Mutation probability, pm Population size 0.5 1/2020 500

Results of the conventional regression analysis and two NNbased approaches were compared using the 36 random test cases (refer to Table 3), with the help of scatter plots (refer to Fig. 9) and in terms of deviation (i.e., the difference between the target and predicted values of a response) in prediction of different responsesFH, FW, BH and BW (refer to Fig. 10). It is to be noted that the said test cases were collected through the real experiments by Juang et al. [16]. Fig. 11(a) shows a comparison of the above three approaches in terms of % deviation in prediction of FH. Both the NN-based approaches were found to perform better than the conventional regression analysis for this response. Moreover, GA-NN showed a slightly better performance compared to that of BPNN. A large amount of % deviation in prediction had been recorded for 4th, 20th, 27th test cases and thus those were removed and comparisons of the above approaches are shown again in Fig. 11(b). The large amount of % deviation values for these test cases could be due to the errors in experiment and measurement. The above three approaches were compared in terms of % deviation in prediction of weld bead front width, as shown in Fig. 11(c). Similar comparisons of the above three approaches are made in Fig. 11(d), with respect to % deviation in prediction of bead back height. The values of % deviation in prediction of bead back width, as obtained by using the above three approaches, are compared in Fig. 11(e). The values of average absolute % deviation in prediction of different responses obtained by using different approaches viz. conventional regression analysis, BPNN and GA-NN are shown in Table 4. From the above study, it has been observed that both the NN-based approaches outperformed the conventional regression analysis and GA-NN approach was seen to perform slightly better than the BPNN. The NN-based approaches were able to bring adaptability, which was absent in conventional regression analysis. It happened due to the fact that the errors generated for 1000 training data were averaged out during the training of the NNs. Thus, the NN-based approaches were found to be more

Fig. 12. Comparisons of BPNN and GANN in terms of search speed.

adaptive compared to conventional regression analysis, for the test cases (which are different from the data used to carry out the regression analysis). It happened due to the fact that the NNbased approaches might have carried out interpolation within the specic ranges of the data. The BPNN works based on the principle of steepest descent algorithm, which might have the local minima problem. On the other hand, the chance of GAsolutions getting trapped into the local minima is smaller. Thus, GA-NN approach slightly outperformed BPNN approach for all the responses. Fig. 12 shows the nature of search carried out by BPNN and GA-NN, iteration-wise, to minimize the mean squared deviation in prediction of the responses. Initially, the BPNN showed a better performance compared to that of the GA-NN, but after about 60,000 iterations, the latter took over. Being a gradient-based search, the BPNN was able to reduce the deviation suddenly at the initial stage of its search and after that, it was unable to make further improvement. It could be due to the fact that the solutions of the steepest descent method have reached the local minima. On the other hand, the GA through its exhaustive search, is able to yield the global optimal solution. However, the performances of BPNN and GA-NN will depend on the nature of the deviation surface. If the deviation surface is found to be uni-modal in nature, BPNN may nd the optimal solution faster than the GA-NN does. On the other hand, GANN may outperform the BPNN, while carrying out search on a multi-modal deviation surface.

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P. Dutta, D.K. Pratihar / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 184 (2007) 5668 [5] L.E. Svensson, B. Gretoft, H.K.D.H. Bhadeshia, An analysis of cooling curves from the fusion zone of steel weld deposits, Scand. J. Metall. 15 (1986) 97103. [6] H.K.D.H. Bhadeshia, Modelling of phase transformations in steel welds, Proc. of ECOMAP98 (Environment Conscious Innovative Materials Processing), Kyoto, Japan, 1998, pp. 3544. [7] A. De, S.K. Maiti, C.A. Walsh, H.K.D.H. Bhadeshia, Finite element simulation of laser spot welding, Sci. Technol. Welding Joining 8 (2003) 377384. [8] A. De, C.A. Walsh, S.K. Maiti, H.K.D.H. Bhadeshia, Prediction of cooling rate and micro-structure in laser spot welds, Sci. Technol. Welding Joining 8 (2003) 391399. [9] L.J. Yang, R.S. Chandel, M.J. Bibby, An analysis of curvilinear regression equations for modeling the submerged arc welding process, J. Mater. Process. Technol. 37 (14) (1993) 601611. [10] N. Murugan, R.S. Parmer, S.K. Sud, Effect of submerged arc process variables on dilution and bead geometry in single wire surfacing, J. Mater. Process. Technol. 37 (1993) 767780. [11] Y.S. Tarng, W.H. Yang, Optimization of the weld bead geometry in gas tungsten arc welding by the Taguchi method, Int. J. Adv. Manuf. Technol. 14 (1998) 549554. [12] J.I. Lee, S. Rhee, Prediction of process parameters for gas metal arc welding by multiple regression analysis, Proc. of Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B, vol. 214, 2000, pp. 443449. [13] I.S. Kim, J.S. Son, I.G. Kim, J.Y. Kim, O.S. Kim, A study on relationship between process variables and bead penetration for robotic Co2 arc welding, J. Mater. Process. Technol. 136 (2003) 139 145. [14] K. Anderson, G.E. Cook, K. Ramaswamy, Articial neural network applied to arc welding process modeling and control, IEEE Trans. Indus. Appl. 26 (5) (1990) 824830. [15] G.E. Cook, R.J. Barnett, K. Anderson, A.M. Strauss, Weld modeling and control using articial neural networks, IEEE Trans. Indus. Appl. 31 (6) (1995) 14841491. [16] S.C. Juang, Y.S. Tarng, H.R. Lii, A comparison between the backpropagation and counter-propagation networks in the modeling of the TIG welding process, J. Mater. Process. Technol. 75 (1998) 54 62. [17] C.S. Wu, T. Polte, D. Rehfeldt, Gas metal arc welding process monitoring and quality evaluation using neural network, Sci. Technol. Welding Joining 5 (5) (2000) 324328. [18] D.S. Nagesh, G.L. Datta, Prediction of weld bead geometry and penetration in shielded metal-arc welding using articial neural networks, J. Mater. Process. Technol. 123 (2002) 303312. [19] J. Holland, Adaptation in Natural and Articial Systems, The Univ. of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, USA, 1975. [20] D.C. Montgomery, Design and Analysis of Experiments, John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pvt. Ltd., 2001. [21] S. Haykin, Neural Networks, Pearson Education, 1999. [22] D.K. Pratihar, Evolutionary roboticsa review, Sadhana 28 (6) (2003) 9991009.

5. Conclusions To determine inputoutput relationships in TIG welding process, conventional regression analysis was carried out based on full factorial design of experiments (DOE) and two neural network-based approaches (i.e., back-propagation algorithm and genetic-neural system) were developed. Comparisons were made of the above approaches, after testing their performances on 36 randomly generated test cases. From the above study, conclusions have been made as follows. Both the NN-based approaches were seen to be more adaptive compared to the conventional regression analysis, for the test cases. It could be due to the reason that the NN-based approaches were able to carry out interpolation within the ranges of the variables. Genetic-neural (GA-NN) system outperformed the BPNN in most of the test cases (but not all). It is so, because a GAbased search was used in the former approach, in place of a gradient-based search utilized in the latter approach. Being a gradient-based search, the back-propagation algorithm had a natural tendency to get stuck at the local minima, whereas a more exhaustive search was carried out by the GA, in the genetic-neural system. BPNN showed a slightly better performance compared to the genetic-neural system initially, but after about 60,000 iterations, the latter started to perform better than the former. It might be due to the fact that the solutions of BPNN were still lying on the local basin of the deviation (error) function, whereas the GA continued its search on a wider space, to reach the global optimal solution. However, the performances of these two approaches were dependent on the nature of the deviation function. References
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