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Experimental Investigation and Multi Objective

Optimization of WEDM of Duplex Steel using
Grey Coupled Fuzzy
ARTICLE AUGUST 2015

2 AUTHORS:
Bala Narasimha

Vamsi krishna Mamidi

National Institute of Technology Karnataka

Madanapalle Institute of Technology & Science

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International Journal of Applied Engineering Research, ISSN 0973-4562 Vol. 10 No.71 (2015)
Research India Publications; http://www.ripublication.com/ijaer.htm

Experimental Investigation and Multi Objective

Optimization of WEDM of Duplex Steel using Grey
Coupled Fuzzy
Bala G Narasimha

Vamsi M Krishna

Rajesh Nagadolla

S. V. College of Engineering
Tirupati, India
balanarasimha.g@gmail.com

MadanapalleInstitute of
Technology and Science
Madanapalle, India,
mamidivk@gmail.com

S. V. College of Engineering
Tirupati, India
raajesh06@gmail.com

Abstract:In this study, Grey coupled fuzzy logic methodology is

used for multi response optimization of Wire Electrical
Discharge Machining parameters, which converts the multi
responses into a single MPCI. Based on MPCI, optimal
combination of parameters are determined. L9 orthogonal array
is used for plan of experiments. Maximum Material removal rate
and Minimum surface roughness were chosen as the objectives.
The attractive combination of high corrosion resistance, good
mechanical strength and relatively low cost makes duplex
stainless steels (DSSs) as one of the fastest growing groups of
stainless steels. In this study Duplex steel is considered as the
target material for Wire Electrical discharge Machining. A Multi
- performance characteristic index (MPCI) was used for
optimization. The process parameters viz., pulse on time, pulse
off time, wire feed, wire tension were optimized with
consideration of MPCI. The confirmation run, results shows that
the better quality is achieved by the optimal combination of
process parameters.

[4]. Generally, Taguchi method is used to optimize the single

response characteristics of process parameters to achieve high
quality [e.g., 5-6], which is not suitable for present scenario in
industries. At present, handling multi-response characteristics
are an interesting and challenging research. Grey relational
analysis is used to determine the optimal parameters by
converting multi responses into single response (grey
relational grade) [e.g., 7 - 8]. Zadeh [9] initiated Fuzzy logic
theory, which is used to deal with uncertain and vague
information, using fuzzy sets such as low, medium and
high. Fuzzy theory proves an effective way of solving the
problem, which attracts the many researchers in various fields.
To improve system performance, few researchers investigated
grey relational analysis coupled with fuzzy logic [10-11] and
identified improvement in the results. ANOVA is carried out
to determine the percentage of contribution of each factor on
the response of the system.

Keywords: Duplex Steel, Multi objective optimization, Grey

relational analysis, Fuzzy logic

II.

EXPERIMENTAL SETUP/OUTPUT MESUREMENT

In the present study, Duplex steel is used as target material.

Experiments were performed using Electronica Maxicut Wire
EDM. A 0.25 mm diameter, brass wire was used as an
electrode and distilled water is used as dielectric fluid. A
small gap of 0.025 mm to 0.05 mm is maintained in between
the wire and work-piece. The dimensions of the work piece
for experimentation is 10 * 10 * 13 mm. The process
parameters were being set in the WEDM control panel and the
experiments were conducted as per the design of experiments
shown in Table 2. The time required for metal removal from
work piece is determined by using stopwatch and the surface
roughness is determined by using talysurf instrument and the
results were tabulated in Table 2. In this study four process
parameters with three levels are chosen for machining. The
parameters and its levels are shown in Table 1. L9 (33-1 = 9
runs) orthogonal array of experiments was chosen for
experimentation, instead of L 27 array (33 = 27 runs) to reduce
the experimentation cost.

I. INTRODUCTION
Duplex stainless steels are named as Duplex because, it is of
two-phase microstructure consisting of grains of austenitic
and ferritic stainless steel, possessing high corrosion
resistance and excellent mechanical properties [1]. At present,
these steels are used in various industries like power plants,
water purification and marine etc. Wire Electrical Discharge
Machining (WEDM) is a unconventional manufacturing
process, used to machine very hard materials with high
precision. The unique feature of WEDM is that it utilizes
thermal energy to machine electrically conductive parts,
which makes advantage in the manufacture of parts with
complex shapes and hard material [2]. WEDM has been
widely used in many industries, which requires high precision
and quality [3]. The research in WEDM processing has been
focused on rapid machining with best quality. Manufacturing
industries applies various methodologies to identify the effect
of machining parameters on material removal rate and surface
roughness, which are the most important objectives in the
manufacturing.

A - Pulse-on (s), B - Pulse-off (s), C - Wire tension (N), D Wire feed (m/min), X - MRR (mm3/sec), Y Surface
Roughness (m).

To achieve best quality and good functionality, it is important

to select the suitable, optimal process parameters and its levels
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International Journal of Applied Engineering Research, ISSN 0973-4562 Vol. 10 No.71 (2015)
Research India Publications; http://www.ripublication.com/ijaer.htm

Convert the original sequences to a set of comparable

TABLE1

PROCESS PARAMETERS AND LEVELS

sequences by normalizing the data. Depending upon the

response characteristic, three main categories for normalizing
the data is as follows:

Process
parameters

Level 1

Level 2

Levels
Level - 3

Pulse-on
(s)

Larger the better

Pulse-off
(s)

ai k =

Wire tension
(N)
Wire feed
(m/min)
TABLE2
Expt.
No
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

III.

bi

k min b i k

max b i k min b i k

(1)

Smaller the better

ai k =

DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS AND RESPONSES

3
3
3
6
6
6
9
9
9

3
6
9
3
6
9
3
6
9

1
2
3
2
3
1
3
1
2

7
8
9
9
7
8
8
9
7

18.57
19.70
20.00
26.00
28.89
28.89
20.00
26.00
32.50

2.65
2.90
2.65
2.83
2.97
2.76
3.00
2.94
2.85

max b i
max b i

k b i

k min b i

(2)

Nominal the better

= 1

max {

(3)

Where is the experimental result in ith, is the

normalized result in the ith experiment and OV is the
()
optimum value. The original reference sequence0 (k) = 1
()
and normalized data a i (k) (comparability sequence) where i
= 1,2,.,m; k =1,2,.....,n respectively, where m is the number
of experiments and n is the total number of observations of
data.

GREY RELATIONAL ANALYSIS

B. Grey relational coefficient and grey relational grade:

In 1989, Deng proposed Grey relational analysis for solving
complicated interrelationships between the multiple response
characteristics problems. In grey relational analysis, the
system has information in the form of black and white. If the
system is grey, some information is known and some
information is unknown, i.e., relationships among factors in
the system are uncertain. If the system is white, the
relationships between factors are certain. In the grey relational
analysis, grey relational grade is used to optimize multiresponse system. The grey relational analysis includes the
following steps:

Grey relation coefficient (ij ) is calculated for each of the

performance characteristics, which expresses the relationship
between ideal and actual normalized experimental results, as
shown in Eq.(4).
min +max

ij = oi

(4)

k +max

i =1,2,.,m; k =1,2,.....,n respectively, where m is the number

of experiments and n is the total number of observations of
data. Where oi k is the deviation sequence of the reference
sequence a 0 k and comparability sequence a i k .

i.e.; = |0 |, and

min = |0 |,
max = |0 |

Conduct the experiments as per design of experiments.

Transform the experimental results into signal-to-noise
ratio.
Normalize the values of signal-to-noise ratio.
Perform grey relational generating and calculate grey
relational coefficient.
Calculate the grey relational grade by averaging the grey
relational coefficient.

is the distinguishing coefficient and the value lies between

0 and 1 i.e. 0 1. The distinguishing coefficient value
generally chosen to be 0.5. Grey relational grade can be
calculated by taking the average of is the weighted grey
relational coefficient and defined as follows:
(0 , ) = 1

A. Normalization

499

(5)

International Journal of Applied Engineering Research, ISSN 0973-4562 Vol. 10 No.71 (2015)
Research India Publications; http://www.ripublication.com/ijaer.htm

where is the weighting factor of each response. In the

present study, all process parameters influence the responses,
so equal weights are assigned to parameters.
TABLE3 S/N RATIOS, NORMALIZED AND GREY
RELATIONAL COEFFICIENTS
Expt
No

S/N ratios

Normalized
values

Grey Relational
Coefficients

MRR

SR

MRR

SR

MRR

SR

1.

25.376

-8.464

0.000

0.006

0.333

0.335

2.

25.888

-9.233

0.105

0.712

0.358

0.635

3.

26.020

-8.458

0.132

0.000

0.366

0.333

4.

28.299

-9.035

0.601

0.531

0.556

0.516

5.

29.214

-9.458

0.789

0.919

0.704

0.862

6.

29.214

-8.811

0.789

0.325

0.704

0.426

7.

26.020

-9.545

0.132

1.000

0.366

1.000

8.
9.

28.299
30.237

-9.378
-9.081

0.601
1.000

0.846
0.573

0.556
1.000

0.765
0.540

IV.

Fig. 2. Fuzzy Structure

In this study, grey relation coefficient of Material removal rate

(MRR) and surface roughness(SR) has been taken as fuzzy
inputs using triangular membership functions form and grey
relation fuzzy grade (MPCI) as output for finding out optimal
process parameters. The input and output fuzzy set has been
defined in the range between 0 and 1. The desired output is
targeted on maximizing grey relation fuzzy grade. The fuzzy
inputs are uniformly assigned into five fuzzy subsets very
low (VL), low (L), medium (M), High (H) and very High
(VH) grade, as shown in Fig. 3.

DETERMINATION OF OVERALL FUZZY

GRADE

Fuzzy logic is one of the powerful artificial intelligence

techniques, resolves problem which consists huge uncertain
information. It is highly suitable for defining the relationship
between system input and desired outputs in linguistic form. A
fuzzy logic unit comprises a fuzzifier, membership functions,
a fuzzy rule base, an inference engine and a defuzzifier as
shown in Fig.1. At first, using membership functions the
inputs are fuzzified by the fuzzifier, and then fuzzy value is
generated by the inference engine based on fuzzy rules and
lastly the fuzzy value into a fuzzy grade by the defuzzifier.
The structure built for this study is a two inputs and one
output as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 3. Fuzzy input MRR & SR

Unlike the input variables, the output variable is assigned into

relatively nine subsets i.e., very very low (VVL), very low
(VL), Low (L), medium low (ML), medium (M), medium
high (MH), high (H), very high (VH), very very high (VVH),
as shown in Fig.4.

Fig. 1. Fuzzy Logic model

Fig. 4. Fuzzy output MPCI

The relationship between the two fuzzy inputs are defined in

the form of if-then fuzzy rules as listed in Table 4.

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International Journal of Applied Engineering Research, ISSN 0973-4562 Vol. 10 No.71 (2015)
Research India Publications; http://www.ripublication.com/ijaer.htm
TABLE4

FUZZY RULES

Grey relational coefficients of MRR

Rules

Grey relational
coefficients of SR

Table 5. Shows the order of grey relational and grey fuzzy

reasoning grades obtained from the FIS. On comparing the
results, there is an improvement in the values of grey fuzzy
grades, which indicates the reduction of uncertainty in data.
The larger MPCI value among all possible combinations of
the process parameters indicates the optimal combination of
parameters and confirmed that the experiment number 9 has
the optimal combination of process parameters for machining.
The averages of MPCIs for each level of the machining
factors are then computed and tabulated in Table 6. The
darkened number in each column of factors indicates the best
level for each factor. The delta, indicates the difference
between maximum and minimum, of MPCIs. Rank 1
represents the largest delta among their levels and have more
influence on the machining process.

VL

VH

VL

VVL

VL

ML

VL

ML

MH

ML

MH

ML

MH

VH

VH

MH

VH

VVH

In this study, Mamdani max-min compositional operation is

adopted for fuzzy reasoning. A typical linguistic fuzzy rule
called Mamdani is described as
Rule 1: if x1is A1and x2 is B1 then y is C1 else

TABLE6

Rule 2: if x1is A2 and x2 is B2 then y is C2 else

LEVEL

RESPONSE TABLE FOR GREY-FUZZY GRADE

PULSE
ON
-8.047

Rule n: : if x1 is An and x2 is Bn then y is Cn

-4.209

-3.903

-4.503

-4.853

In above, Ai, Bi, are fuzzy subsets defined by the

corresponding membership functions, i.e., Ai, Bi, and Ci.
the membership function of the output of fuzzy reasoning can
be expressed as

-2.991

-5.448

-4.805

-5.874

DELTA

5.056
1

1.994
2

1.437
4

1.355
3

---------------------------------------------------------

RANK

V.
0 = 1 1 1 2 1 1

where is the minimum operation and is the maximum

operation. In this study, Fuzzy grade 0 , is computed using
Center-of-gravity defuzzication method, transforms the fuzzy
inference output 0 into a fuzzy grade 0 , i.e.
0
0

WIRE
TENSION
-5.940

WIRE
FEED
-4.519

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE (ANOVA)

ANOVA is performed to identify the contribution of process

parameters of WEDM on MPCIs. An ANOVA table as
shown in Table. 7 consists of degrees of freedom, sums of
squares and the percentage of contribution. From Table 7, it
shows that the process parameters Pulse on and Pulse off have
the most influence on the MPCI, which coincides with the
results of Table 7. It is observed that the Pulse On (72.73%) is
most significant factor followed by Pulse off (11.74%), Wire
feed (8.72%) and Wire tension (6.81%). The percentage of
error is 0% indicating the selection of the process parameters
are highly reliable.

1 2 1 (6)

0 =

PULSE
OFF
-5.897

(7)

The fuzzy grade is the final crisp output value known as

MPCI, as shown in Table 5.

TABLE7

TABLE5 GREY RELATIONAL AND GREY FUZZY

GRADES
Expt. No
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Grey Relational
grade
0.334
0.497
0.349
0.536
0.777
0.565
0.683
0.661
0.770

Grey Fuzzy
grade (MPCI)
0.349
0.498
0.358
0.547
0.783
0.549
0.684
0.671
0.775

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

Source

DF

Seq SS

Adj SS

Seq MS

%
Contribution

Order

Pulse on

0.1525

0.1525

0.07627

72.73

9
7
8
6
1
5
3
4
2

Pulse off

0.0246

0.0246

0.01231

11.74

Wire tension

0.0142

0.0142

0.00714

6.81

Wire feed

0.0182

0.0182

0.00914

8.72

Error

--

--

--

--

Total

0.2097

--

--

100.00

501

International Journal of Applied Engineering Research, ISSN 0973-4562 Vol. 10 No.71 (2015)
Research India Publications; http://www.ripublication.com/ijaer.htm

VI.

[6]

Asiltrk, H. Akkus, 2011Determining the effect of cutting parameters on

surface roughness in hard turning using the Taguchi method,
Measurement, 44, 16971704.
[7] M. Y. Lin, C. C. TSAO , C. Y. Hsu, A. H. Chiou , P. C. Huang , Y. C.
Lin, 2013, Optimization of micro milling electrical discharge machining
of Inconel 718 by Grey-Taguchi method, Trans. Nonferrous Met, 23,
661666.
[8] J. Prasanna, L. Karunamoorthy, M. V. Raman, S. Prashanth, D. R.
Chordia, 2014, Optimization of process parameters of small hole dry
drillingin Ti6Al4V using Taguchi and grey relational analysis,
Measurement, 48, 346354.
[9] Zadeh.L.A, 1965 Fuzzy sets, Information and control, 8, 338-353.
[10] T. Rajmohan, K. Palanikumar, S. Prakash, 2013, Grey-fuzzy algorithm
to optimise machining parameters in drilling of hybrid metal matrix
composites, Composites: Part B, 50 , 297308.
[11] P. Suresh, K. Marimuthu, S. Ranganathan, T. Rajmohan, 2014,
Optimization of machining parameters in turning of AlSiCGr hybrid
metal matrix composites using grey-fuzzy algorithm, Trans.
Nonferrous Met. Soc. China, 24, 28052814.

CONFIRMATION TEST
TABLE8

CONFIRMATION TEST RESULTS

Type

Optimal /
Predicted

Optimal/
Experimental

% Error

Level combination

A3B2C2D1

A3B2C2D1

--

MRR (mm3/sec)

29.2038

29.1967

0.024

2.94

2.93

0.34

0.789

0.787

0.25

SR
(m)
Grey fuzzy grade
(MPCI)

From the table 8. It shows that A3B2C2D1 is an optimal

parameter combination of the machining process obtained by
grey coupled fuzzy logic. The confirmation experiment is
carried out to validate the optimal level of parameters for
maximum Metal removal rate and minimum surface
roughness. After confirmation test, it is clear that the MRR
and SR increased greatly with the optimal parameters and the
fuzzy grade is increased by 43.8%.

VII.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, Grey coupled fuzzy logic analysis is
applied for optimizing the process parameters of WEDM
process, which minimizes the uncertainty and
improvement in Fuzzy grade (MPCI).
The optimal combination of parameters are: pulse on -9 s, pulse off 6 s, wire tension 2 N and wire feed
7 m/min.
From the ANOVA, it shows that Pulse on and Pulse off
are the predominant factors for machining.
Increase of MPCI from 0.349 to 0.787 confirms the
improvement in performance characteristics at optimal
level of process parameters.

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[2]

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[4]
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