Selection of welding process to fabricate butt joints of high

strength aluminium alloys using analytic hierarchic process

V. Ravisankar, V. Balasubramanian
*
, C. Muralidharan
Department of Manufacturing Engineering, Annamalai University, Annamalainagar 608 002, Tamil Nadu, India
Received 23 June 2004; accepted 9 November 2004
Available online 7 January 2005
Abstract
Selection of welding process is an unstructured decision problem involving multiple attributes (factors). To provide decision sup-
port for the welding or design engineer, an all encompassing analysis of multiple attributes is necessary. The present paper reports a
new procedure using an analytic hierarchic process (AHP) for the selection of a welding process to fabricate butt joints of high
strength aluminium alloy of AA 7075 grade, based on the qualitative factors of welding processes, when the quantitative factors
appear to be equal. The following three welding processes from arc welding family are generally used to fabricate high strength alu-
minium alloys: (i) gas metal arc welding (GMAW), (ii) gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW), and (iii) plasma arc welding (PAW). Of
the three available processes, the best process has been selected by doing qualitative analysis with the help of AHP and in the present
case, for welding high strength aluminium alloy, the best process is GTAW.
2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Metal inert gas welding; Tungsten inert gas welding; Plasma arc welding; Analytic hierarchic process; High strength aluminium alloys;
Process selection
1. Introduction
Welding is a manufacturing process for joining dier-
ent materials. Unlike other processes, such as casting,
forming, machining, etc., which are employed to pro-
duce a single component, joining processes are used to
assemble dierent members to yield the desired complex
conguration [1]. There is hardly any material that can-
not be welded, but not all the materials can be welded
using every process. Therefore, the selection of a welding
process to accomplish a joint of desired specications
and quality is imperative before undertaking the fabrica-
tion task. Some welding processes are known to be asso-
ciated with specic applications, such as resistance spot
welding, extensively used in sheet metal work in the
automobile industry and for the fabrication of refriger-
ator shells; gas tungsten arc welding, widely employed
for aerospace, rocket, missile and nuclear industries;
submerged arc welding (SAW), which is the sole process
used for long seams in shipbuilding and pressure vessel
fabrication; electron beam welding, mainly employed
for welding of reactive metals; shielded metal arc weld-
ing (SMAW), which is used for all awkwardly located
joints with dicult access or for eld welding [2].
In all the above instances, the selection of the respec-
tive processes can be attributed to the fact that the de-
sired weld quality is accomplished at the least cost,
and cost is therefore the main selection criterion. In such
specic instances, there may not be any other option and
the exercise of process selection is redundant. However,
there are many instances where a number of processes
can be nearly equally eective in achieving the end prod-
uct. Moreover, for welding a specic material, there are
often many processes available, each having its own
0261-3069/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2004.11.008
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 4144 239734 (O); +91 4144
241147 (R); fax: +91 4144 238080.
E-mail address: visvabalu@yahoo.com (V. Balasubramanian).
www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes
Materials and Design 27 (2006) 373380
Materials
& Design
merits and demerits, and hence from a group of welding
processes, a particular process must be selected based on
its overall benets. The present process selection proce-
dure is aimed at such situations and most often the pro-
cess involved are fusion welding processes of the arc
welding family.
2. Selection of welding process
In this paper, a new procedure has been developed
using the application of an analytic hierarchic process
(AHP) to select a welding technique to fabricate the butt
joints of high strength aluminium alloy of AA 7075
grade. Many of the structural components in machines,
pressure vessels, transport vehicles, earthmoving equip-
ment, spacecraft, etc., are made of welded joints. The
butt welds are the most common ones in the fabrication
and construction of many structures [3]. The following
three welding processes from arc welding family are
commonly employed [46] to fabricate the butt welds
of high strength aluminium alloys: (i) gas metal arc
welding (GMAW), (ii) gas tungsten arc welding
(GTAW), and (iii) plasma arc welding (PAW).
The selection of a welding process for the above case
is usually based on economic considerations and the
welded joint properties. The economic analysis of the
welding can be broadly divided into four components,
namely: (i) equipment cost, (ii) consumable cost (ller
material, shielding gas, etc.), (iii) labour cost, and (iv)
overhead cost [7]. The mechanical and metallurgical
properties of the joint are also considered before select-
ing a process for the fabrication. Mechanical property
analysis of the welded joints will include all the appro-
priate destructive and non-destructive testing methods
to determine its strength, hardness, impact strength, fa-
tigue strength, residual stress level, etc. Similarly, metal-
lurgical analysis of the welded joints will include
chemical composition analysis, microstructural analysis
and fracture surface analysis of the base metal, weld me-
tal and heat aected zone (HAZ), which will provide a
correlation with the changes in mechanical properties.
In general, the entire process selection will consider only
the factors discussed above, i.e. quantitative factors.
However, the qualitative factors for each process, as gi-
ven in Table 1, seem to have been neglected thus far in
the selection procedures. When multiple choices are
available to select a welding process to accomplish a
particular joint, it is essential to base the nal decision
on quantitative as well as qualitative analysis [8]. Unlike
quantitative factors which are easily tractable, the anal-
ysis of qualitative factors requires a more meaningful
approach. An attempt is made in this paper to present
a well structured methodology using AHP for the selec-
tion of a welding process to fabricate butt welds of AA
7075 aluminium alloy.
3. Analytic hierarchy process
Analytic hierarchy process is a tool tocombine qualita-
tive and quantitative factors in the selection of a process.
The AHPmodel has foundnumerous anddiverse applica-
tions and is practiced successfully [9]. A variety of com-
plex decision problems has been dealt with by AHP.
The main advantage of AHP is its ability to handle com-
plex and ill-structured problems which cannot be usually
handled by rigorous mathematical models. In addition to
simplicity, ease of use, exibility and intuitive appeal, the
ability to mix qualitative and quantitative criteria in the
same decision framework has led to AHPs power and
popularity as a decision making tool [10]. The availability
Table 1
Description of process attributes considered
No. Attribute Description
1 Initial preparation required (IPR) Clamping joints in xtures, setting welding parameters (voltage, current, welding
speed, gas ow rate, wire feed, etc.), electrode/ller metal preparation, cleaning the base metal
2 Availability of consumables (AC) Electrodes, ller wires, shielding gases
3 Welder skill requirements (WSR) Fully skilled welder, semiskilled welder, ordinary welder
4 Welding procedures (WP) Pre-heating requirements, root pass requirements, number of passes required,
interpass temperature maintenance, post-heating requirements
5 Weld quality (WQ) Weld bead appearance, percentage of rejects due to welding defects (e.g. distortion,
misalignment, porosity, lack of penetration, etc.)
6 Operator fatigue (OF) Arc glare, smoke and fumes, electrode changing, nozzle cleaning
7 Post-weld cleaning (PC) Slag removal, spatter removal
8 Ease of automation (EA) Manual, semi-automatic, fully automatic
9 Positional welding capability (PWC) Horizontal welding, vertical welding, overhead welding, root pass welding
10 Cost of welding (CoW) Labour cost, consumable cost, power cost, etc.
374 V. Ravisankar et al. / Materials and Design 27 (2006) 373380
of software (expert choice) has further increasedthe use of
AHP. Three features of AHP dierentiate it from other
decision making approaches: (i) its ability to handle both
tangible and intangible attributes, (ii) its ability to struc-
ture the problems, in a hierarchical manner to gain in-
sights into the decision making process, and (iii) its
ability to monitor the consistency with which a decision
maker uses his/her judgement.
An AHP can enable decision makers to represent the
interaction of multiple factors in complex situations.
The process requires the decision makers to develop a
hierarchical structure for the factors which are explicit
in the given problem and to provide judgements regard-
ing the relative importance of each of these factors, and
ultimately to specify a preference for each decision alter-
native with respect to each factor. The process provides
a prioritized rank order indicating the overall degree of
preference for each decision alternative. An advantage
of the AHP over other multicriteria decision making
methods is that the AHP is designed to incorporate tan-
gible as well as intangible factors, especially where the
subjective judgements of dierent individuals constitute
an important part of decision process.
The general approach of an AHP is to decompose the
total problem into smaller subproblems such that each
subproblem can be analysed and appropriately handled
using practical perspectives in terms of data and infor-
mation. The objective of decomposition of the total
problem into several levels is to enable a pairwise com-
parison of all the elements on a given level with respect
to the related elements in the level just above. The solu-
tion process consists of three stages, namely:
(i) determination of the relative importance of the
attributes;
(ii) determination of the relative importance of each of
the alternatives with respect to each attribute;
(iii) overall priority weight determination of each of
these alternatives.
A key step in the AHP is the establishment of prior-
ities through the use of the pairwise comparison proce-
dure and the quality of the ultimate decision relates to
the consistency of judgements demonstrated by the deci-
sion maker during the process of pairwise comparison.
4. Activity based costing (ABC)
To survive and succeed in a customer centric compet-
itive business world it becomes imperative for organiza-
tions to be cost competitive as well as render better and
sustained performance on qualitative factors [11]. As the
world moves towards a global market place, there
emerges a pertinent need for organizations to gain com-
petitive advantage over others. Therefore, the need of
the hour is an accounting system which will be able to
analyse precisely how costs arise, enable cost control
and reduction and also eliminate redundant costs [12].
Activity based costing (ABC) developed by Cooper
and Kaplan [13] attributes variable, xed and overhead
costs directly to each product using the activities re-
quired to produce the product as the means of alloca-
tion. In ABC, the cost of the product equals the cost
of raw materials, plus the sum of all the costs of every
activity used to produce the product. Thus, ABC costing
dierent from traditional costing which accumulates the
cost of raw materials and direct labour, then applies
overhead using an arbitrary allocation formula based
on volume of production rather than activity [14]. By
breaking product cost into various activities in ABC,
costs can be controlled by managing the activities and
the events that cause the cost consuming activity. ABC
system identies how resources are consumed by each
product and attaches overheads according to this con-
sumption pattern. There is very little indirect cost in
an ABC costing system, since most costs can be di-
rectly attributed to the product. In ABC, activities per-
formed during the production or support of a product
for which costs are associated are called cost drivers.
Drivers such as labour hours, machine hours, oor
space used, number of set ups, orders, movements, size
and weight, complexity and sales costs, etc., can be iden-
tied other than the initial investment cost of equipment
and accessories. When managers segregate acitivities in
this way, a hierarchy emerges. The hierarchy leads to a
structured way of thinking about relationship between
activities and the resources they consume. Table 2 gives
the cost drivers used to compare the welding costs for
the three processes for unit level of activities.
AHP has been integrated with ABC in estimating the
overhead costs associated for developing a product by
Partovi [15]. Schnlederjans and Garvin [16] have inte-
grated AHP and ABC for the selection of cost drivers.
In this work, ABC is used for quantitative analysis of
welding cost and AHP is used to quantify the qualitative
factors. The general methodology for welding process
selection for specic material is depicted in Fig. 1.
Table 2
Welding activity and cost drivers
Welding activity Cost driver
Labour Time
Power Wattage
Filler metal Kilogram
Electrode Number
Shielding gas Cubic meter
Welding Machine hours
Quality Number (percentage) of rejects
Space Cubic meter
V. Ravisankar et al. / Materials and Design 27 (2006) 373380 375
5. Basic steps in AHP model
The basic steps in the AHP [17] are as follows:
1. List the set of processes that the engineer can
undertake.
2. Identify the factors, which may be intrinsic as well as
extrinsic, that might have an impact. For each of
these impacts identify the criteria and the quantiable
indicators for the criteria that could be used as a
measure.
3. Develop a graphical representation of the problem in
terms of the overall goal, the factors, the criteria and
the decision alternatives. Such a graph depicts the
hierarchy for the problem.
4. Assign weights to each alternative on the basis of the
relative importance of its contribution to each deci-
sion criterion. This is carried out through a pairwise
comparison of the alternatives based on the decision
criterion.
5. Once the pairwise comparison matrix has been
formed for a criterion, the normalized priority of each
alternative is synthesized. The procedure for this as
follows: (a) sum the values in each column; (b) divide
each element in the column by its column total, which
results in a normalized pairwise comparison matrix,
and (c) compute the average of the elements in each
row of the normalized comparison matrix, thus pro-
viding an estimate of the relative priorities of the
alternatives.
6. In addition to the pairwise comparisons of the alter-
natives, use the same pairwise comparison procedures
to set the priorities for all the criteria in terms of the
importance of each in contributing towards the over-
all goal.
7. The priority is synthesized in a manner similar to step
5.
8. Calculate the overall priority for each alternative.
9. Select the alternative having the highest priority.
6. Implementation of AHP
When multiple welding processes are available for
selection to achieve a particular joint (as discussed in
Quantitative factors Qualitative factors
Activity based Costing
GMAW/GTAW/PAW
Technical (known)
1. Base metal properties
2. Welding parameters
3. Weld joint dimensions
4. Service requirements of
joints
Production
Attributes selected
for analytic hierarchic
process (AHP)
Best process
Process Selection
Fig. 1. Methodology for welding process selection.
376 V. Ravisankar et al. / Materials and Design 27 (2006) 373380
Section 2), it is essential to base the nal decision on
quantitative and qualitative analysis [18]. The general
methodology for process selection for a specic material
is shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 2 shows the schematic layout of
the AHP model and provides a format for understand-
ing the hierarchy for the problem, wherein the rst level
shows that the overall goal is to select the best process
available to fabricate butt joints of high strength alu-
minium alloy of AA 7075 grade. At the second level, fac-
tors such as weld quality, operator fatigue, availability
of consumables, etc. will contribute to the achievement
of the above goal. At the third level, the three alterna-
tives (GMAW, GTAW and PAW) are presented and
these must be evaluated through the criteria in a unique
manner.
Table 1 gives the description of all the attributes
(factors) considered in this selection procedure, to
achieve the desired objective (step 2). Table 3 gives
the typical scale for pairwise comparison (step 4)
which may be used for preparing the pairwise
comparison matrix elements for each criterion. Table
3 gives a pairwise comparison of attributes (step 5),
made by considering the fabrication of butt joints
only and this reveals that the weld quality is the most
important attribute (priority = 0.2219) followed by
cost of welding (priority = 0.2219) and so on. Tables
414 represent the pairwise comparison of the pro-
cesses (GMAW, GTAW and PAW) with regard to
each of these attributes (step 6). In Tables 414, the
values given in parentheses are calculated (step 7)
using step 5.
GMAW GTAW
IPR AC WP WSR WQ OF PC EA PWC COW
Level 3
Level 2
Select best welding process
PAW
Level 1
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of analytic hierarchic process model.
Table 3
Scale for pair wise comparison
Degree of importance Denition
1 Equal (no preference)
2 Intermediate between 1 and 3
3 Moderately preferable
4 Intermediate between 3 and 5
5 Strongly preferable
6 Intermediate between 5 and 7
7 Very strongly preferable
8 Intermediate between 7 and 9
9 Extremely strongly preferable
Reciprocal of
above numbers
(1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc.)
If a criterion is assigned to one of the
above numbers when it is compared with
another, the second will be assigned the
reciprocal of the number when it is
compared with the rst
V. Ravisankar et al. / Materials and Design 27 (2006) 373380 377
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Table 5
Comparison of processes on initial preparations required (IPR)
Process GMAW GTAW PAW Priority weight
GMAW 1 (0.120) 1/7 (0.106) 3 (0.333) 0.186
GTAW 7 (0.840) 1 (0.746) 5 (0.555) 0.715
PAW 1/3 (0.039) 1/5 (0.149) 1 (0.111) 0.099
Total 8.33 1.34 9 1.000
Table 6
Comparison of processes on availability of consumable (AC)
Process GMAW GTAW PAW Priority weight
GMAW 1 (0.111) 1/5 (0.117) 1/3 (0.100) 0.110
GTAW 5 (0.555) 1 (0.588) 2 (0.600) 0.581
PAW 3 (0.333) 1/2 (0.294) 1 (0.300) 0.309
Total 9 1.7 3.33 1.000
Table 7
Comparison of processes on welder skill requirements (WSR)
Process GMAW GTAW PAW Priority weight
GMAW 1 (0.111) 1/5 (0.130) 1/3 (0.076) 0.106
GTAW 5 (0.555) 1 (0.653) 3 (0.692) 0.633
PAW 3 (0.333) 1/3 (0.217) 1 (0.231) 0.261
Total 9 1.53 4.33 1.000
Table 8
Comparison of processes on welding procedures (WP)
Process GMAW GTAW PAW Priority weight
GMAW 1 (0.077) 1/7 (0.096) 1/5 (0.048) 0.074
GTAW 7 (0.538) 1 (0.676) 3 (0.714) 0.643
PAW 5 (0.385) 1/3 (0.225) 1 (0.238) 0.283
Total 13 1.48 4.2 1.000
Table 9
Comparison of processes on weld quality (WQ)
Process GMAW GTAW PAW Priority weight
GMAW 1 (0.066) 1/9 (0.088) 1/5 (0.024) 0.059
GTAW 9 (0.600) 1 (0.800) 7 (0.853) 0.751
PAW 5 (0.333) 1/7 (0.114) 1 (0.121) 0.189
Total 15 1.25 8.2 1.000
Table 10
Comparison of processes on operator fatigue (OF)
Process GMAW GTAW PAW Priority weight
GMAW 1 (0.653) 3 (0.692) 5 (0.555) 0.633
GTAW 1/3 (0.217) 1 (0.230) 3 (0.333) 0.260
PAW 1/5 (0.130) 1/3 (0.076) 1 (0.111) 0.107
Total 1.53 4.33 9 1.000
378 V. Ravisankar et al. / Materials and Design 27 (2006) 373380
The cost of each process for welding is found by using
the activity cost drivers and is used in Table 14. Table 14
gives the priority weights for the cost data for welding
processes by applying AHP. The results of Tables 414
are summarized in Table 15, in which the composite
weight for each of the processes is determined (step 8).
However, the values given in parentheses are obtained
by multiplying the priority weight of the attribute and
the corresponding priority weight of the process for
the same attribute. For example, the value of 0.0028
(for GMAW, row 1) is obtained by multiplying 0.015
(attribute priority weight) and 0.186 (process priority
weight for GMAW). The composite weight of each pro-
cess (total) is obtained by summing all the values given
in parentheses and it is evident that the GTAW process
(with a composite weight of 0.5287) is preferred, fol-
lowed by GMAW (composite weight = 0.3004) and
PAW (composite weight = 0.1707) processes.
The process must be prioritized according to bene-
ts and costs ie., in terms of what purposes the pro-
cess fullls and how strongly and also in terms of
what it would cost to bring about these processes.
The dierence between the benet attributes and cost
attributes is that while one wishes to maximize the
benets derived by the proposed system, the cost attri-
butes deal with those issues and parameters whose
inuence one wishes to minimize. It is seen that
GTAW with the score of 0.5287 is to be selected for
fabricating butt joints of high strength aluminium al-
loy of AA 7075 grade.
7. Conclusions
1. Process selection is an important engineering issue,
especially when many of the factors are intangible.
The selection of welding process at the lowest overall
cost requires an understanding of the interrelation
between qualitative and quantitative factors. AHP
makes it possible to quantify the intangible factors
in a more elaborate manner.
Table 11
Comparison of processes on post-weld cleaning (PC)
Process GMAW GTAW PAW Priority weight
GMAW 1 (0.067) 1/9 (0.082) 1/5 (0.038) 0.062
GTAW 9 (0.600) 1 (0.735) 4 (0.769) 0.701
PAW 5 (0.333) 1/4 (0.184) 1 (0.192) 0.237
Total 15 1.36 5.2 1.000
Table 12
Comparison of processes on ease of automation (EA)
Process GMAW GTAW PAW Priority weight
GMAW 1 (0.667) 6 (0.600) 3 (0.692) 0.653
GTAW 1/6 (0.111) 1 (0.100) 1/3 (0.076) 0.096
PAW 1/3 (0.222) 3 (0.300) 1 (0.230) 0.251
Total 1.5 10 4.33 1.000
Table 13
Comparison of processes on positional welding capability (PWC)
Process GMAW GTAW PAW Priority weight
GMAW 1 (0.746) 5 (0.806) 7 (0.538) 0.697
GTAW 1/5 (0.149) 1 (0.161) 5 (0.384) 0.231
PAW 1/7 (0.106) 1/5 (0.032) 1 (0.076) 0.072
Total 1.34 6.2 13 1.000
Table 14
Comparison of processes on cost of welding (COW)
Process GMAW GTAW PAW Priority weight
GMAW 1 (0.238) 1/3 (0.210) 5 (0.500) 0.316
GTAW 3 (0.714) 1 (0.632) 4 (0.400) 0.582
PAW 1/5 (0.048) 1/4 (0.158) 1 (0.100) 0.102
Total 4.2 1.583 10 1.000
Table 15
Final composite rating of the welding processes
No. Attribute Attribute priority weight Process priority weights
GMAW GTAW PAW
1 IPR 0.015 0.186 (0.0028) 0.715 (0.0107) 0.099 (0.0015)
2 AC 0.022 0.110 (0.0024) 0.581 (0.0128) 0.309 (0.0068)
3 WSR 0.063 0.106 (0.0067) 0.633 (0.0399) 0.261 (0.0164)
4 WP 0.139 0.074 (0.0103) 0.643 (0.0894) 0.283 (0.0393)
5 WQ 0.222 0.059 (0.0131) 0.751 (0.1667) 0.189 (0.0420)
6 OF 0.095 0.633 (0.0601) 0.260 (0.0247) 0.107 (0.0102)
7 PC 0.027 0.062 (0.0017) 0.701 (0.0189) 0.237 (0.0064)
8 EA 0.064 0.653 (0.0418) 0.096 (0.0061) 0.251 (0.0161)
9 PWC 0.131 0.697 (0.0913) 0.231 (0.0303) 0.072 (0.0094)
10 COW 0.222 0.316 (0.0702) 0.582 (0.1292) 0.102 (0.0226)
Total 0.3004 0.5287 0.1707
Rating 2 1 3
V. Ravisankar et al. / Materials and Design 27 (2006) 373380 379
2. The procedure presented in this paper may provide
decision making support for welding/design engineers
in fabricating butt joints of high strength aluminium
alloy of AA 7075 grade by considering the qualitative
factors of welding processes when the quantitative
factors are likely to be similar.
3. The utility of such decision support lies in providing
information articulation, practicability and immense
value in terms of understanding of process manage-
ment. Moreover, benchmarks can be established
using AHP and ABC for process selection.
4. Ready accessibility, a user interface as a result of the
specication of various attributes, minimal data
requirements and straightforward communicability
are the advantages of the proposed AHP framework.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Defence Metallurgical
Research Laboratory (DMRL), Hyderabad and Weld-
ing Research Institute, Tiruchirappalli, India for provid-
ing useful information regarding the welding of high
strength aluminium alloys.
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