Prediction of age-hardening behaviour of LM4 and its composites using artificial neural networks

Abstract This research work highlights the prediction of hardness behaviour of age-hardened LM4 and its composites fabricated using a two-stage stir casting method with TiB₂ and Si₃N₄. MATLAB - Artificial Neural Networks is used to predict the age-hardening behaviour of LM4 and its composites. Experiments (hardness and tensile tests) are conducted to collect data for training an ANN model as well as to investigate the effect of reinforcements and age-hardening treatment on LM4 and its composites. The results show that with an increment in the reinforcement wt%, there is an enhancement in hardness and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) values within the monolithic composites. As-cast hybrid composites display a 37 to 54% improvement in hardness compared to as-cast LM4. Heat-treated samples, specifically those treated with peak aging with MSHT and 100 °C aging, perform better than as-cast samples and other heat-treated samples in terms of UTS and hardness. Compared to as-cast LM4, MSHT, and 100 °C aged samples display an 85 to 202% increment in VHN. Hybrid composites perform better in terms of hardness, while composites with 3 wt% of TiB₂ (L3TB) perform better in terms of UTS, peak aged (MSHT and 100 °C aging) L3TB display 68% increment in UTS when compared to as-cast LM4. ANN model is developed and trained with five inputs (wt% of TiB₂, wt% of Si₃N₄, type of solutionizing, aging temperature, and aging time) and one output (VHN) using different algorithms and a different number of hidden neurons to predict the age hardening behaviour of composites. Among them, Lavenberg-Marquardt (LM) training algorithm with normalized data and 30 hidden neurons performs well and shows a least average error of 1.588364. The confirmation test confirms that the trained ANN model can predict the output with an average %error of 0.14 using unseen data.