Title: Experimentation and weld parameter optimisation using grey fuzzy analysis

Authors: M. Satheesh; J. Edwin Raja Dhas

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Noorul Islam Centre for Higher Education, Kumaracoil, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Automobile Engineering, Noorul Islam Centre for Higher Education, Kumaracoil, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: The most popular steel grade material highly used in the fabrication of industrial pressure vessels and boilers is SA516 grade 70. Submerged Arc Welding is a metal joining technique widely used in heavy fabrication industries for its high quality, reliability, attaining deeper penetration and a smooth appearance of weld bead. In this paper, Taguchi's L27 orthogonal array is used to perform welding of SA 516 grade 70 steel plates. To improve the weld quality, the optimal combination of welding parameters is chosen using grey relational analysis. Grey fuzzy optimisation of welding parameters is based on four different output performance characteristics, namely, bead reinforcement, bead width, bead penetration and dilution. From analysis of variance it is evident that electrode stick out is the most influential factor in submerged arc welding process parameters. Mechanical and metallurgical studies are performed to confirm the effectiveness of the approach.

Keywords: ANOVA; fuzzy; bead geometry; orthogonal array; Taguchi method.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2019.099191

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2019 Vol.31 No.4, pp.495 - 516

Received: 28 Jan 2017
Accepted: 26 Aug 2017
Published online: 23 Apr 2019 *

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