Optimization of geometrical and mechanical characteristics in laser surface alloying

Abstract

Abstract Laser surface alloying is a material processing technique to modify a surface utilizing the laser beam's thermal energy. Laser surface alloying is a non-linear process and depends on many input process parameters. Literature suggests laser power, scan speed, and powder feed rate are important parameters for material processing using laser surface alloying. The main problem with laser surface alloying is selecting these process parameters to develop a sound alloyed bead. Sound alloyed bead refers to a bead having all the desirable characteristics. In this study, the desirable characteristics are dilution percent, aspect ratio, bead angle, surface microhardness, average microhardness, and erosion rate. Our aim was to maximize dilution percent, aspect ratio, bead angle, microhardness, and minimize erosion rate. This paper discusses the multi-objective optimization of these characteristics. Comparison of average experimental values and the optimum values suggest an improvement of 20.06%, 8.25%, 4.27%, 4.1%, 10.52%, 4.59% in dilution percent, aspect ratio, bead angle, surface microhardness, average microhardness, and erosion rate, respectively.