Devaraj Rajamani, Abouel Nasr Emad, Esakki Balasubramanian, Kasi Ananthakumar, Mohamed Hussein
Centre for Autonomous System Research, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai 600062, India.
Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia.
Materials (Basel). 2020 Aug 12;13(16):3558. doi: 10.3390/ma13163558.
Nickel-based alloys, especially Monel 400™, is gaining its significance in diverse applications owing to its superior mechanical properties and high corrosion resistance. Machining of these materials is extremely difficult through the traditional manufacturing process because of their affinity to rapid work hardening and deprived thermal conductivity. Owing to these difficulties a well-established disruptive metal cutting process namely plasma arc cutting (PAC) can be widely used to cut the sheet metals with intricate profiles. The present work focuses on an intelligent modeling of the PAC process and investigation on the multi-quality characteristics of PAC parameters using the fuzzy logic approach. The Box-Behnken response surface methodology is incorporated to design and conduct the experiments, and to establish the relationship between PAC parameters such as cutting speed, gas pressure, arc current, and stand-off distance and responses which include the material removal rate (MRR), kerf taper (KT), and heat affected zone (HAZ). The quadratic regression models are developed and their performances are assessed using the analysis of variance (ANOVA). Fuzzy set theory-based models are formulated to predict various responses using the Mamdani approach. Fuzzy logic and regression results are compared with the experimental data. A comparative evaluation predicted an average error of 0.04% for MRR, 0.48% for KT, and 0.46% for HAZ, respectively. The effect of variations in PAC process parameters on selected responses are estimated through performing the sensitivity analysis.
镍基合金，尤其是蒙乃尔400™，因其卓越的机械性能和高耐腐蚀性，在各种应用中日益重要。由于这些材料易于快速加工硬化且导热性差，通过传统制造工艺对其进行加工极其困难。鉴于这些困难，一种成熟的破坏性金属切割工艺——等离子弧切割（PAC）可广泛用于切割具有复杂轮廓的金属板材。目前的工作重点是对PAC工艺进行智能建模，并使用模糊逻辑方法研究PAC参数的多质量特性。采用Box-Behnken响应面方法设计和进行实验，建立切割速度、气体压力、电弧电流和离焦量等PAC参数与包括材料去除率（MRR）、切口锥度（KT）和热影响区（HAZ）在内的响应之间的关系。建立了二次回归模型，并使用方差分析（ANOVA）评估其性能。使用Mamdani方法建立基于模糊集理论的模型来预测各种响应。将模糊逻辑和回归结果与实验数据进行比较。对比评估预测，MRR的平均误差为0.04%，KT为0.48%，HAZ为0.46%。通过进行敏感性分析，估计了PAC工艺参数变化对选定响应的影响。
