Prediction of the abrasive wear behaviour of heat-treated aluminium-clay composites using an artificial neural network

ABSTRACTThis work employs the T6 heat treatment process to aluminium-clay (Al-Clay) composite consisting of 15 wt% clay. The samples were solutionized at 500°C, 550°C and 600°C, and were quenched in air, oil and water. Selected samples of the heat-treated composite were subjected to wear tests using Denison T62 HS pin-on-disc wear-testing machine in accordance with ASTM: G99-05 standard. The effects of two different loads (4 and 10 N) and three sliding speeds (200, 500 and 1000 rpm) under dry sliding conditions were investigated. The potential of using back-propagation neural network with 4-10-1 architecture was explored to predict the wear rate of the heat-treated composites. The results show that the performance of Levenberg–Marquardt training algorithm is superior to all other algorithms used. The well-trained ANN system satisfactorily predicted the experimental results and can be handy for an optimum design and also an alternative technique to evaluate wear rate.