Investigation of gas metal arc welding process parameters of aluminium alloy weldment using Taguchi-grey-fuzzy integrated approach

Globally, aluminium alloys are being used in many industries. Application of aluminium alloys is realized by many manufacturing processes in which joining processes are inevitable. Joining of aluminium alloys is achieved by various welding processes. One of the appropriate welding processes used to join aluminium alloy is Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW). This paper investigates the effect of process parameters of the GMAW process while welding AA 6351 aluminium alloy weldment with the help of an integrated Taguchi–Grey–Fuzzy approach. Taguchi L-16 array was designed by using an orthogonal method to conduct the experiments. From the experimental results, Signal-to-Noise Ratios (S/N ratio) were calculated from which Grey Relational Grades (GRG) were computed. These computed Grey Relational Grades were used as input for the fuzzy controller to find the Grey Fuzzy Relational Grades (GFRG), by which optimized process parameters were found and validated. Furthermore, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to identify the contributions of the GMAW process parameters over the responses. Subsequently, the effects of process parameters on the weldments were also discussed in detail. By identifying the optimized process parameters and contributing process parameters, the quality of weld joints is improved.