ANN modeling of kerf taper angle in CO<inf>2</inf>laser cutting and optimization of cutting parameters using Monte Carlo method

Abstract

© 2014 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. In this paper, an attempt has been made to develop a mathematical model in order to study the relationship between laser cutting parameters such as laser power, cutting speed, assist gas pressure and focus position, and kerf taper angle obtained in CO<inf>2</inf>laser cutting of AISI 304 stainless steel. To this aim, a single hidden layer artificial neural network (ANN) trained with gradient descent with momentum algorithm was used. To obtain an experimental database for the ANN training, laser cutting experiment was planned as per Taguchi’s L27 orthogonal array with three levels for each of the cutting parameters. Statistically assessed as adequate, ANN model was then used to investigate the effect of the laser cutting parameters on the kerf taper angle by generating 2D and 3D plots. It was observed that the kerf taper angle was highly sensitive to the selected laser cutting parameters, as well as their interactions. In addition to modeling, by applying the Monte Carlo method on the developed kerf taper angle ANN model, the near optimal laser cutting parameter settings, which minimize kerf taper angle, were determined.