Journal of Materials Processing Technology 166 (2005) 392397

A comparative study of some network approaches to predict the effect of the reinforcement content on the hot strength of Albase composites
Issam S. Jalham
Industrial Engineering Department, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan Received 10 October 2003; received in revised form 31 August 2004; accepted 31 August 2004

Abstract Due to the nonlinear complex effect of the reinforcement content and the deformation conditions such as temperature and strain rate on the ow stress, the existing models especially those dependent on the activation energy are not suitable to predict the hot deformation behavior. To achieve this purpose, it was decided to use the property of some of the existing models such as radial-base function network (RBF), multi-layer perceptron (MLP) network, and neuro-fuzzy network to predict the nonlinear behavior in the stressstrain behavior of the material. The results showed that the neuro-fuzzy network is the best tool to predict the hot deformation behavior of Albase composites with different reinforcement content (5, 10, 15, and 20%) of Al2 O3 particles that have an average particle size of 25 m at different deformation conditions since the reinforcement content and the deformation conditions have a nonlinear complex effect on the ow stress. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Modeling; Radial-base function (RBF); Articial neural network (ANN); Neuro-fuzzy; Metal matrix composite (MMC); Reinforcement

1. Introduction The characterization of composite materials is fundamental to their reliable use. One of the characterization methods is to determine the bounds on effective mechanical and thermal properties of particulate composites. The bounds provide a range, as well as a maximum error range, in predicting homogenized effective properties. In certain situations, the upper and lower bounds of the effective properties can be far apart and the technique is good only for linear properties. Notable among the works on these bounding techniques are those of Hashin and Shtrikman [1], which assume the constituents to be isotropic and homogeneous, Torquat [2]; Milton [3] and Davis [4]. Davis [4] proposed third-order bounds that assume the particles to be spherical and arranged in one of the several possible arrangements are much sharper or closer together. Numerical analysis techniques such as nite-element analysis have also been used to predict the effective mechanical

Tel.: +962 77 427024; fax: +962 6 5355588. E-mail address: jalham@ju.edu.jo.

and thermal properties of particulate composites, as well as certain nonlinear properties such as strength [5,6], residual stresses [7], stressstrain relations and creep, etc. [8]. In our works [5,6], mathematical and nite element modeling were used to study the hot deformation process of Albase metal matrix composites. Empirical modeling methods were also used to study the behavior of MMCs at elevated temperatures using Arrhenius type equations to study the constitutive ow behavior of these materials [917]. However the activation energies, which have been determined vary widely in magnitude, and it is presently unclear which mechanisms are in operation. The nonlinearity in the Arrhenius plot indicates that the powerArrehnius relationship is roughly followed [910]. This can also be supported by Besterci et al. [18] who evaluated the parameters of the equation of state characterizing the overall inuence of temperatures and deformation rates on stress. To overcome the gross approximations introduced by the empirical models discussed above, articial neural network (ANN) models were successfully used to predict the hot working behavior of steels of a xed composition [19], for studying the effect of carbon content on hot strength [20],

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for efcient modeling and accurate simulation of milling process [21], and to predict parameters in the hot working of aluminum alloys [22]. In our previous work [23], the physical quantities that affect the hot deformation process were determined and used to predict the behavior of Al-based metal matrix composites (MMC) of a xed composition under hot deformation for a range of temperatures and a range of strain rates and the two-layered RBF network structure with one hidden layer bias was used to evaluate the deformation process. The strain, strain rate and temperature were found to be the input variables that govern the process. This approach was used due to the powerfulness of the RBF to evaluate, analyze, and predict the behavior regardless the complexity of the scheme and has been found superior to many other techniques [24,25]. The following work of the author [26] showed that the ltrated ANN approach gave better results than RBF approach. Because of the complex effect of the reinforcement content (which was xed in our works [23,26]) on the ow strength of composites, it was decided to nd which of the ANN, RBF, and neuro-fuzzy approaches can give the best and closest results to the experimental ones.

Fig. 1. RBF two-layered network structure used in this investigation.

dependent on the choice of the centers. This capability is due to localization property of the RBF network [28]. The selection criterion for the training of the data and the developed model based on that in [23] have been adopted to optimize the selection of training data and to predict the ow stresses corresponding to the conditions within the boundary conditions. 2.2. Multi-layer perceptron network A neural network is an adaptable system that can learn relationships through repeated presentation of data and is capable of generalizing to new, previously unseen data. It is so powerful because it can learn any desired inputoutput mapping if they have sufcient numbers of processing elements in the hidden layers. The articial neural network used in this current work is a supervised multi-layer perceptron feedforward network trained with a standard back propagation algorithm [20]. It computes changes to the weights in the nal layer rst, reuses much of the same computation to compute changes to the weight in the pre-ultimate layer, and ultimately goes back to the initial layer. Its idea is to make a large change to a particular weight if the change leads to a large reduction in the error observed at the output nodes. The three-layer network with one hidden layer that was used in this investigation is shown in Fig. 2. The multi-layer perceptron were trained with backpropagation algorithm. The

2. The approaches used in this study 2.1. Radial-base functions network Modeling using radial basis function is composed of two parts, the rst is selecting appropriate set of RBF centers, and the second part is solution of linear equations. For this purpose, a subset of the input data was chosen as the centers of the data. This produced sufcient accuracy for the data as compared to other techniques such as ANN used for the same purpose. Broomhead and Lowe [27] provided a generalization form of the RBF expansion that is suitable for many applications with a mapping F : Rn R according to
nr

F (x) = 0 +
i=1

i ( x c i )

(1)

where () is a function from R+ R, is the Euclidean norm, i , 0 i nr , are the weights of the parameters, ci Rn , 1 i nr , are the RBF centers and nr is the number of centers. The centers ci are either to be a subset of the data or distributed uniformly in the input domain. () is chosen as the thin-platespline function, multiquadric function, inverse multiquadric function or the Gaussian function. The Gaussian function was used in this research work and provided acceptable predictions by implementing it as a two-layered network structure as shown in Fig. 1. The RBF network is composed of two layers, the rst layer (hidden layer) is a nonlinear transformation and the second part is a linear combiner. It is postulated that if a sufcient number of neurons are used, the RBF network is capable of approximating a large class of functions. However, the approximation is

xRn ,

Fig. 2. MLP three-layer network structure used in this investigation.

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I.S. Jalham / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 166 (2005) 392397 Table 1 Chemical composition of the MMC material used in this investigation Mg Si 0.54 Cu 0.27 Mn 0.14 Fe 0.63 Al Balance Al2 O3 (vol.%) 5, 10, 20 m 25

equation to update the weights in momentum learning is [20]: wij (n + 1) = wij (n) + i (n)xj (n) + (wij (n) wij (n 1)) (1) where wij is the weight between nodes i and j at iteration n, i (n) is the local error, which can be directly computed from the instantaneous error between the desired response and the system response. At the output processing elements or as a weighted sum of errors at the internal processing elements, is step size, and is the momentum and is set to a value between 0.1 and 0.9. The selection of training algorithm, stopping criteria and representative training set is the most important practical aspect related to training an ANN model. The mean square error of the test set was used as the stopping criteria and to evaluate the performance of the training. The work was accomplished by using the MATLAB software facilities. Unlike other ANN approaches [19,20], this approach used the output of the previous training to be as input to the next one. 2.3. Neuro-fuzzy systems approach A neuro-fuzzy system is a fuzzy system that uses a learning algorithm derived from or inspired by neural network theory to determine its parameters by processing data samples. Modern neuro-fuzzy systems are usually presented as special multi-layer feedforward neural networks. For example, adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS) [29], Fuzzy neural networks (FuNe) [30], and fuzzy net rules [31]. In this study, the neuro-fuzzy network uses a multi-layer network structure as shown in Fig. 3. Each input neuron of layer A represents a fuzzy variable. The fuzzy sets of these variables are the neurons in layer B. The fuzzy set membership functions are implemented as Gaussian functions. The

0.9

bias weights ws determine the width of the Gaussian and weights wc determine its center to layer B. The neurons of layer C implement the rules and the neurons of layers D and E are the membership functions of the output fuzzy sets and fuzzy variables. The weights wf determine the truth value for each consequence and the weights s and c connecting layers D and E determine the shape and location of the Gaussian function of the output fuzzy set. The network was trained by a back propogation process minimizing the square error of all output neurons over all data sets. The width and centres of the Gaussian fuzzy sets were adjusted as well as the rule weights wf .

3. Methodology The methodology, followed in this investigation, consisted of ve steps which are: experimental determination of the behavior of the used material, training the RBF Network, training the MLP network, training the neuro-fuzzy network, and using the trained networks to predict the behavior for specimens of a data that were not used in training the network (verication). The behavior of Albase composite with various volume fractions (5, 10, 15 and 20%) of the 25 m average particle size Al2 O3 has been determined experimentally under compression. The chemical composition of the used Albase composite material is shown in Table 1. The 250 tonnes isothermal computer controlled press, which was described in [56], was used to carry out the compression operation at a temperature range between 300 and 500 C and for strain rates 0.01, 1.0 and 5 s1 . Then the data were prepared to train the networks in order to determine the weights related to the predicted internal network constitutive equations. The best approach can be determined as the one that has the minimum relative error. To verify the approach, the experimental results can be compared to the results predicted by the best approach.

4. Results and discussions The representative results of the hot pressing of the particulate reinforced AlAl2 O3 composites containing 5, 15, and 20% Al2 O3 at a range of temperatures from 300 to 500 C and strain rates of 0.01, 1.0, and 5 s1 are shown in the Figs. 46. Fig. 4 shows the true stresstrue strain behavior of the compression tests of Albase composite with different reinforcement content at different deformation conditions of strain rate and at 300 C. While Figs. 5 and 6 show the true stresstrue strain behavior of the compression tests of Albase and 5, 15, and 20% Al2 O3 at temperatures 400 and

Fig. 3. The multi-layer neuro-fuzzy network structure that was used in this investigation.

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Fig. 4. The true stresstrue strain behavior of the compression tests of Albase composite at temperature 300 C and 5, 15, and 20% Al2 O3 content.

Fig. 6. The true stresstrue strain behavior of the compression tests of Albase composite at temperature 500 C and 5, 15, and 20% Al2 O3 content.

500 C, respectively. The initial rapid rise of the stress from the elastic limit until the peak is associated with an increase in dislocation density as a result of work hardening. But during hot deformation, work hardening takes place, is balanced by the dynamic softening processes, which are thermally activated and can be observed in the gures after the starting of yielding. It can also be seen from these gures that the higher the temperature, the lower is the difference in the ow stress developed by the temperature intervals and the strain softening is more pronounced at higher strain rates but at

Fig. 5. The true stresstrue strain behavior of the compression tests of Albase composite at temperature 400 C and 5, 15 and 20% Al2 O3 content.

high temperatures and low strain rates the ow curves exhibit longer steady state regime. This is in a good agreement with the works [5,6,9,15,16,23]. The family of stressstrain curves in these gures also show that the tendency for strain softening and yielding (the difference between the starting and nal yield points for each curve) decreases as the volume fraction of Al2 O3 increases. The complex effect of the reinforcement content on the ow strength of composites especially when different deformation conditions are used makes mathematical modeling not an easy task. Moreover, the radial-base function approach was used successfully to estimate the hot strength of Albase composites at different deformation conditions such as temperature and strain rate, when specimens of a xed content of the reinforcement (12% Al2 O3 ) were used, gave good results in our previous work [23]. On the other hand, the ltrated ANN approach gave better estimation than RBF network approach [26]. Based on what has been mentioned before, it was decided to use the radial-base function network, the ltrated MLP network approach, and the neuro-fuzzy network to nd out which of these approaches is the best one to overcome the gross approximation of the existing mathematical models when not only the deformation conditions vary but also the reinforcement content. Based on the analysis of the results after the training of the networks, the relative error of the predicted values with relative to the experimental (measured) values were plotted as shown in Figs. 79. It is clear from Fig. 7 that the scattered values of the relative error reach about 19% while the relative error for the MLP network reaches less than 15% (Fig. 8). This is due to the inuence of the reinforcement content on the results. Fig. 9 represents the relative error for the neuro-fuzzy approach. It is obvious from this gure

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Fig. 7. The relative error between the predicted and measured stresses for the data used for training after the training of the RBF network.

Fig. 10. Verication of the neuro-fuzzy network predictions using experimental results not used for training to predict the behavior of AlAl2 O3 at different deformation conditions and different reinforcement content.

Fig. 8. The relative error between the predicted and measured stresses for the data used for training after the training of MLP network.

that a high percentage (more than 95%) of the predicted values of the stress after training is within the range of 2.5% error, while more than 98% of the predicted values of the stress after training is within the range of 5% error and all the predicted values of the stress after training is within the range of 10% error. So, it can be concluded that the trained neuro-fuzzy network is the most capable approach to predict the stressstrain behavior of the AlAl2 O3 composites of

different reinforcement content at different processing conditions with less error. Although the RBF and the MLP approaches gave good predictions when the deformation condition are the only variables of the process and the MLP approach gave more accurate results [23,26], they failed to predict the behavior with high accuracy but the MLP approach maintained its ability to be better than RBF approach. The ability of the predicted internal network constitutive equation by neuro-fuzzy network to predict the nonlinear behavior of the material could be veried as shown in Fig. 10. For verication purposes, the experimental results not used for training the networks were as compared to the neuro-fuzzy predictions. Different contents and different conditions were used to be sure of the ability of this approach. For example, the results of different content of the Al2 O3 reinforcement (5, 10, and 20%) were veried at a xed temperature of 400 C and xed strain rate of 5 s1 , while the results of using two temperatures (400 and 500 C) with other xed conditions of the reinforcement content (20%) and strain rate (s1 ) and using two different strain rates (1.0 and 5.0 s1 ) at xed temperature (500 C) and different content of the reinforcement (10 and 20%). A good agreement was found (as shown in Fig. 10).

5. Conclusions 1. The ow stress of the Albase composite material at any particular strain rate and temperature increases with increasing the reinforcement content of Al2 O3 , increasing strain rate, and decreasing temperature.

Fig. 9. The relative error between the predicted and measured stresses for the data used for training after the training of neuro-fuzzy network.

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2. The higher the temperature, the lower is the difference in the ow stress developed for the used temperature interval and the strain softening is more pronounced at higher strain rates but at high temperatures and low-strain rates the ow curves exhibit longer steady state regime. 3. The tendency for strain softening and yielding (the difference between the starting and nal yield points for each curve) decreases as the volume fraction of Al2 O3 increases. 4. It was found that the neuro-fuzzy network is the best tool to predict the hot deformation behavior of Albase composites with different reinforcement content at different deformation conditions although the reinforcement content and the deformation conditions have a nonlinear complex effect on the ow stress. References
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