Development of hybrid model and optimization of surface roughness in electric discharge machining using artificial neural networks and genetic algorithm

The present work is aimed at optimizing the surface roughness of die sinking electric discharge machining (EDM) by considering the simultaneous affect of various input parameters. The experiments are carried out on Ti6Al4V, HE15, 15CDV6 and M-250. Experiments were conducted by varying the peak current and voltage and the corresponding values of surface roughness (SR) were measured. Multiperceptron neural network models were developed using Neuro Solutions package. Genetic algorithm concept is used to optimize the weighting factors of the network. It is observed that the developed model is within the limits of the agreeable error when experimental and network model results are compared. it is further observed that the error when the network is optimized by genetic algorithm has come down to less than 2% from more than 5%. Sensitivity analysis is also done to find the relative influence of factors on the performance measures. It is observed that type of material effectively influences the performance measures. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.