296 Int. J. Manufacturing Research, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Predicting the effects of tool geometries on friction stirred aluminium welds using artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic techniques H.K. Mohanty, M.M. Mahapatra and Pradeep Kumar Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, IIT, Roorkee-247667, India Pankaj Biswas* Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT, Guwahati-781039, India E-mail: panu012@yahoo.co.in *Corresponding author Nisith Ranjan Mandal Department of Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture, IIT, Kharagpur-721302, India Abstract: Effect of friction stir welding (FSW) tool geometries on aluminium welds were investigated using different tool shoulder and pin probe geometry profiles. A combination of 27 tool shoulder and pin profile geometries were used for the experimental purpose using a design matrix. The effect of these tool geometries on the friction stir welds like the weld strength, weld cross-section area and grain sizes were investigated. The effects of the tool geometries were predicted using artificial intelligence techniques such as artificial neural networks (ANN) and fuzzy logic modelling. It was observed that, for a combination of FSW tool geometries, the ANN model was not so effective in predicting the FSW weldment characteristics, while the fuzzy logic model was able to predict the same with much lower percentage of error for the test cases. [Received 4 January 2012; Revised 9 August 2012; Accepted 26 December 2012] Keywords: friction stir welding; FSW; tool shoulder; tool pin probe profile; weld strength. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Mohanty, H.K., Mahapatra, M.M., Kumar, P., Biswas, P. and Mandal, N.R. (2013) ‘Predicting the effects of tool geometries on friction stirred aluminium welds using artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic techniques’, Int. J. Manufacturing Research, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp.296–312. Biographical notes: H.K. Mohanty has more than 20 years of experience in imparting technical education and training in government run institutions. He is currently working as a Research Scholar at Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department of IIT Roorkee and sponsored by Government of Orissa, India. His research topic is related to the modelling of friction stir welding process considering the effects of tool geometries.