Estimation and Comparison of Welding Performances Using MRA and GMDH in P-GMAW for SS 316L Material

The Pulsed Gas Metal Arc Welding (P-GMAW) process is used in high-technology industrial applications and it is one of the most significant arc welding processes. The quality, productivity and cost of welding will be affected by the P-GMAW welding input process parameters and are considered to the most important factors. It is necessary to determine the input and output relationship of the welding processes in order to understand and control the P-GMAW welding process parameters. P-GMAW is widely used process, especially in thin sheet metal industries. It offers an improvement in quality and productivity over regular Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW). The process enables stable spray transfer with low mean current and low net heat input. This paper describes the estimation and comparison of welding process parameters viz., current, gas flow rate and wire feed rate on ultimate tensile strength, yield strength, percentage of elongation and hardness. Experiments have been performed based on Taguchi’s L₂₇ standard orthogonal array. Estimation of welding performances have been carried out using sophisticated mathematical models viz., MRA and GMDH, and, compared. The GMDH algorithm is designed to learn the process by training the algorithm with the experimental data. Three different criterion functions, viz., regularity, unbiased and combined criterions were considered for estimation in GMDH. Different GMDH models can be obtained by varying the percentage of data in the training set and the best model can be selected from these, viz., 50%, 62.5% and 75%. Estimation and comparison of welding performances were carried out using MRA and GMDH techniques.