Abstract
Reduced-activated ferritic-martensitic steels are being considered for use in fusion energy reactor and subsequent fusion power reactor applications. Typically, those reduced activated steels can loose their radioactivity in approximately 100 years, compared to thousands of years for the non-reduced-activated steels. The commonly used welding process for fabricating this steel are electron-beam welding, and tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding. Therefore, Activated-flux tungsten inert gas (A-TIG) welding, a variant of TIG welding has been developed in-house to increase the depth of penetration in single pass welding. In structural materials produced by A-TIG welding process, weld bead width, depth of penetration and heat affected zone (HAZ) width play an important role in determining in mechanical properties and also the performance of the weld joints during service. To obtain the desired weld bead geometry, HAZ width and make a good weld joint, it becomes important to set up the welding process parameters. The current work attempts to develop independent models correlating the welding process parameters like current, voltage and torch speed with weld bead shape will bead shape parameters like depth of penetration, bead width, HAZ width using ANFIS. These models will be used to evaluate the objective function in the genetic algorithm. Then genetic algorithm is employed to determine the optimum A-TIG welding process parameters to obtain the desired weld bead shape parameters and HAZ width.
Highlights
Reduced-activation steels were developed to enhance safety and reduce adverse environmental effects of future fusion power plants
Activated-flux tungsten inert gas (A-TIG) welding, a variant of TIG welding has been developed in-house to increase the depth of penetration in single pass welding
In structural materials produced by A-TIG welding process, weld bead width, depth of penetration and heat affected zone (HAZ) width play an important role in determining in mechanical properties and the performance of the weld joints during service
Summary
Reduced-activation steels were developed to enhance safety and reduce adverse environmental effects of future fusion power plants. Accurate models using ANFIS or ANN can be developed for predicting weld bead shape parameters as a function of welding process variables These models find application during the evaluation of objective function in genetic algorithm. In the present work, welding process parameters like current, voltage and torch speed are correlated, using ANFIS, which incorporates effective learning from given data, to weld bead shape parameters like depth of penetration, bead width and HAZ width. These ANFIS models are employed in GA to evaluate the objective function and to arrive at the optimal solutions for obtaining target Weld bead geometry and HAZ width during A-TIG welding of Reduced-Activated Ferritic-Martensitic steels
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