Prediction of quality characteristics of laser drilled holes using artificial intelligence techniques

Micro-drilling using lasers finds widespread industrial applications in aerospace, automobile, and bio-medical sectors for obtaining holes of precise geometric quality with crack-free surfaces. In order to achieve holes of desired quality on hard-to-machine materials in an economical manner, computational intelligence approaches are being used for accurate prediction of performance measures in drilling process. In the present study, pulsed millisecond Nd:YAG laser is used for micro drilling of titanium alloy and stainless steel under identical machining conditions by varying the process parameters such as current, pulse width, pulse frequency, and gas pressure at different levels. Artificial intelligence techniques such as adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and multi gene genetic programming (MGGP) are used to predict the performance measures, e.g. circularity at entry and exit, heat affected zone, spatter area and taper. Seventy percent of the experimental data constitutes the training set whereas remaining thirty percent data is used as testing set. The results indicate that root mean square error (RMSE) for testing data set lies in the range of 8.17–24.17% and 4.04–18.34% for ANFIS model MGGP model, respectively, when drilling is carried out on titanium alloy work piece. Similarly, RMSE for testing data set lies in the range of 13.08–20.45% and 6.35–10.74% for ANFIS and MGGP model, respectively, for stainless steel work piece. Comparative analysis of both ANFIS and MGGP models suggests that MGGP predicts the performance measures in a superior manner in laser drilling operation and can be potentially applied for accurate prediction of machining output.