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Artificial neural networks modeling of mechanical property and microstructure evolution in the Tempcore process
Abstract
In this study, the microstructures and the mechanical properties of steel bars treated by the Tempcore process have been investigated. In the Tempcore process, AISI 1020 steel bars of various diameters were used. In bars, unlike the self-tempering temperature and the extent of elongation, an increase in the amount of martensite was observed, which caused a consequential increase in yield and tensile strength as a function of quenching duration. The amounts of martensite , bainite, pearlite and the values of elongation, self-tempering temperature, yield and tensile strength could be obtained by a new and fast method, by using artificial neural networks. A PASCAL computer program has been developed for this study.
In the numerical method, bar diameters and quenching durations were chosen as variable parameters. The numerical results obtained via the neural networks were compared with the experimental results .It appears that the agreement is reasonably good.ó2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Reinforcing steel; Artificial neural networks; Tempcore process; Quenching; Tempering; Martensite
1.Introduction
In recent years, the production of high yield strength concrete-reinforcing bars has become increasingly important. High yield strength provides economical use of products.
The name Tempcore is used to define a new process for producing high yield strength concrete-reinforcing steel bars[1–3].This process consists of(i)water quenching of rolled product,(ii)cooling in air and(iii) holding in cooling bed. The martensite layer formed by quenching is reheated by the hot core and reaches a maximum self-tempering temperature after some time. Thus, the martensite layer becomes tempered, as the name Tempcore implies. Quenching duration and self-tempering temperature, which is related to the bar diameter, affect the mechanical behaviour of the bar . Either ferrite, pearlite, and bainite or ferrite and pearlite internal structures form below the martensite layer.
Tempcore process has been used for several years in II_zmir Demir Celik Sanayi A.S.(_IIzmir Iron and Steel Industry Co., Turkey)for steel reinforcing bars with the chemical composition of 0.16–0.21%C,0.17–0.22%Si,
and 0.74–0.83%Mn.Experimental results revealed a linear increase in strength with increasing quenching time, while self-tempering temperature decreases linearly[4].
In the Tempcore process, expensive and prolonged experiments are required to determine the quality of produced materials depending on varying parameters such as quenching time and bar diameter. However, using the mathematical methods, all these difficulties can be overcome easily. It was shown by Cetinel et al. that microstructures and self-tempering temperatures of bars with different diameters for different quenching durations in the Tempcore process could be determined by the finite element method more quickly than by experimental studies [4]. Therefore, in this study, a neural network method has been chosen to simulate the Tempcore process. Experimental findings were used to perform the networks.
The calculated amount of martensite, bainite, pearlite expressed as volume percentage, mechanical property and self-tempering temperature values compare reason-ably with the experimental results. Thus, it becomes possible to predict the required quenching duration for different bar diameters and mechanical properties with-out making a change in the production line. Consequently, the mechanical properties can be predicted and controlled by optimising the quenching duration, and the production line can be predesigned as required.
2. Experimental study
Steel bars of AISI 1020 with the chemical composition of 0.17%C, 0.22%Si,0.79%Mn,0.036%P,0.041% S of different diameters(16,18,20 and 22 mm)were used as test materials. Specimens that had been taken from bars produced by the Tempcore process were cut into 12 mm long pieces, prepared for metallographic examination and etched with 3%nital solution. Mechanical properties were determined using an Instron tensile test machine. Tempering temperature was measured by a pyrometer that was placed at the cooling box. The volume percentages of martensite , bainite and pearlite phases were obtained from etched specimens.Fig.1.shows the structures of steel bars of 18 mm diameter after different quenching durations. Table 1 shows the mechanical properties, self-tempering temperatures and volume percentages of martensite, bainite and pearlite phases obtained for 18 mm diameter steel bar in an average of more than five experiments for each quenching duration studied.
3. Artificial neural networks
Nowadays, engineers and scientists are trying to develop intelligent machines. Artificial neural systems are present-day examples of such machines that have great potential to further improve the quality of our life [5].
It is well known that people and animals are much better and faster at recognising images than most advanced computers. Although computers outperform both biological and artificial neural systems for tasks based on precise and fast arithmetic operations, artificial neural systems represent the promising new generation of information processing networks. Advances have been made in applying such systems for problems found intractable or difficult for traditional computation. Neural networks can supplement the enormous processing power of digital computers with the ability to make sensible decisions and to learn by ordinary experience, as humans do.
Network computation is performed by a dense mesh of computing nodes and connections. They operate collectively and simultaneously on most or all data and inputs. The basic processing elements of neural networks are called artificial neurons, or simply neurons. Often they are simply called nodes. Neurons perform as summing and non-linear mapping junctions. In some cases, they can be considered as threshold units that fire when their total input exceeds certain bias levels. Neurons usually operate in parallel and are configured in regular architectures. They are often organised in layers, and feedback connections both within the layer and toward adjacent layers are allowed. Connection strength is ex-pressed by a numerical value called weight, which can be modified [6].
Among the artificial neural networks, the elementary multilayer perceptrons (MLP) with sigmoidal transfer function have been successfully applied to solve some difficult and diverse problems[7,8]as non-linear discriminant function classifiers. The feedforward network learns from the input data by the supervision of the output data creating single linear discriminant functions by each sigmoid hidden unit and combines them. Thus , this piecewise linear discriminant function works as a non-linear discriminator.
Training the network in a supervised manner with a highly popular algorithm known as the error back-propagation (BP)has become very popular. BP is an optimisation technique for implementing gradient descent in weight space for multilayer feedforward networks.
The basic idea of the technique is to efficiently compute partial derivatives of an approximating function F (w;x) realised by the network with respect to all the elements of the adjustable weight vector w for a given value of input vector x and output vector y. The weights are adjusted to fit linear piecewise discriminant functions to feature space for the best class separability . The difference between the network output and the supervisor output is minimised according to a predefined error function (performance criterion) such as mean square error (MSE)etc.
In this work, the neural network system has been applied with multilayer perceptron (Fig.2) , and BP algorithm by supervised training. A computer program, which was written by the authors in PASCAL, has been used for this application.
Measuring variables such as the volume percentages of martensite, bainite, pearlite, and the values of elongation, yield and tensile strength, the self-tempering temperatures produced as a function of diameters of steel bars and quenching durations have been used for training operations.
3.1. Training of internal structure, self-tempering temperature and mechanical property data
The general aim in the training process is to teach the relations between input and output values to the program and get the results with the possible lowest errors. The input variables are the diameters of steel bars and quenching durations. The output variables are the volume percentages of martensite , bainite , pearlite and the values of elongation, self-tempering temperature yield and tensile strength. Therefore, there are two input variables and seven output variables in this application.
In neural network applications, output values are reduced to values between 0 and 1, which is called the normalization process. This was carried out by dividing the input and output values by some integer numbers.
Two different structures were studied in this work. At first, seven separate programs were used for each output (internal structures, self-tempering temperatures and mechanical properties), so each of these programs has two input nodes and a unique output node.
Secondly, another program which has two input nodes and seven output nodes was used. Experimental values were set as input and output values consisting of 31 rows in each program(some of the input and output values were kept for use in the testing process after the training was complete).The training process is always performed by ‘trial and error method ’and there is no automatic way for that when using artificial neural networks. Training iterations are made by changing the learning rates (a),momentum values(e)and node numbers of hidden layers. The best architecture is obtained in this way to minimize the errors. The optimum a,e and hidden layer node numbers and the final errors after 20,000 training iterations are shown in Table 2.
By running the neural network programs, the average percent errors, and the differences between the given output values and the values after training iterations can be determined. The change in the amount of martensite is shown in Fig.3 for 16 mm diameter steel bar (due to the quenching duration).In Fig.4, the change of percent elongation for a round bar of 22 mm diameter can also be seen. In these two figures, the top and the bottom lines show the maximum and minimum experimental values respectively obtained from the Tempcore process. As seen, the training results obtained are generally within the experimental limits. This means that the neural network program works fine and the values provided are reasonably good.
The errors are minimised with more iterations in neural network programs by using the appropriate a,e and hidden layer nodes. For example, as seen in Fig.5 and also in Table 2, the lowest error has been obtained with the hidden layer node number of 4 for the neural network program for self-tempering temperatures. The program for martensite can also be a good example to show the decrease of the error due to the iteration
number. As seen in Fig.6, percent error has already been reduced to reasonable values after 20,000 iterations.
Training iterations take time because of the many trials undertaken by changing the parameters of pro-grams (a,e and hidden layer node number).Training is finished when the optimum parameters are determined Advanced PCs are needed to reduce the training time. A Pentium 200 PC has been used for these programs.
3.2. Testing
The final and most important step in this work of neural networks is to test the programs designed. The programs were tested using different input and output values that were not given for training previously. The test results were compared with the output values that were experimentally obtained and kept for testing. The testing results were compared with the experimental values as seen in Tables 3–6.In Table 3, the programs were tested for 18 mm diameter bars with 1.20 s quenching duration. The first row shows the average experimental values, the second row shows the testing results of separate programs, and the last row shows the testing results of the combined program (the one with seven outputs).In the same way, the programs were tested for 20 mm bars with 1.30 s, and for 22 mm bars with 1.50 and 1.65 s quenching durations and the results are presented in Tables 4–6 respectively.
The testing processes give exact results for many values. Most of the other results are also good enough for the internal structures and mechanical properties. The results can also be compared depending on the programs used. The combined program with seven outputs has given better results for most values, while the seven separate programs have given good results for others.
4. Conclusion
In this work, determination of the volume percent-ages of internal structures, mechanical properties and self-tempering temperature values has been achieved by using artificial neural networks. The experimental results for various bar diameters were used for training the neural network programs, and these programs were tested by the different inputs that were not used for training. The testing results were found to be reasonably good.
The calculated volume percentages of phases, self-tempering temperatures, and the values of other properties were found to be highly satisfactory in comparison with the experimental results. Thus , it becomes possible to predict the quenching durations for required microstructure and mechanical property values for different bar diameters without making a change in the production line. Consequently , appropriate quenching duration for a designed quality of material can be predicted and the production line can be adjusted without any experiments.
It can finally be concluded that the neural networks are able to predict internal structures, mechanical properties and self-tempering temperatures of steel bars of various diameters at different quenching durations. Calculations done by the testing process of the neural network programs took only milliseconds. Therefore , it can be reasonably assumed that the neural network programs provide a quick means of calculations conducted in this work.
References
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