Comparative assessment of supervised machine learning algorithms for predicting geometric characteristics of laser cladded inconel 718

Laser cladding, an innovative surface modification and coating preparation process, has emerged as a research hotspot in material surface modification and green remanufacturing domains. In the laser cladding process, the interaction between laser light, powder particles, and the substrate results in a complicated mapping connection between process parameters and clad layer quality. This work aims to shed light on this mapping using fast evolving machine learning algorithms. A full factorial experimental design was employed to clad Inconel 718 powder on an A286 substrate comprising 64 groups. Analysis of variance, contour plots, and surface plots were used to explore the effects of laser power, powder feeding rate, and scanning speed on the width, height, and dilution rate of the cladding. The performance of the predictive models was evaluated using the index of merit (IM), which includes mean square error (MSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and coefficient of determination (R2). By comparing the performance of the models, it was found that the Extra Trees, Random forest regression, Decision tree regression, and XGBoost algorithms exhibited the highest predictive accuracy. Specifically, the Extra Trees algorithm outperformed other machine learning models in predicting the cladding width, while the RFR algorithm excelled in predicting the associated height. The DTR algorithm demonstrated the best performance in predicting the cladding dilution rate. The R2 values for width, height, and dilution rate were found to be 0.949, 0.954, and 0.912, respectively, for these three models.