Application of Artificial Neural Network for Prediction of Hardness of Shielded Metal Arc Welded Joints under the Influence of External Magnetic Field

The present study presents the influence of welding current, welding voltage, welding speed and external magnetic field on hardness of shielded metal arc welded mild steel joints. Mild steel plates of 6 mm thickness were used as the base material for preparing single pass butt welded joints. Speed of welding was provided by cross slide of a lathe machine, external magnetic field was obtained by bar magnets. Hardness properties of the joints fabricated by E-6013 electrodes as filler metals were evaluated and the results were reported. From this investigation, it was found that the hardness of weld decreased if either voltage or current increased, and it increased if either of speed of welding or external magnet field increased. An artificial neural network technique was used to predict the hardness property of the weld for the given welding parameters after training the network. The study reveals that the artificial neural network technique is an efficient tool to predict the hardness correctly if welding parameters are known.