FEM-ANN Sequential Modelling of Laser Transmission Welding for Prediction of Weld Pool Dimensions

In this chapter, a sequential modeling approach has been applied for modeling of laser transmission welding process using finite element method (FEM) and artificial neural network (ANN) technique to predict the weld pool dimensions in a shorter time frame. The scripting language, APDL (ANSYS® Parametric Design Language), is used to develop the three-dimensional FE model. During preprocessing, all the major physical phenomena of laser transmission welding process are incorporated into the model physics. Based on the temperature field predicted by the model, the weld pool dimensions (i.e., weld width and weld penetration depth) are calculated. The weld dimensions predicted by the developed FE model are further used for training a neural network model. It is found from the results of test data sets that the developed ANN model can predict the outputs with significant accuracy and takes less prediction time, which in turn saves time, cost, and the efforts for performing experiments.