Experimental investigation and statistical optimization of laser surface cladding parameters

In laser surface cladding process, the formed clad geometry is directly affected by laser cladding parameters like laser power, scan speed, and powder feed rate. Therefore, finding an optimal parameter setting to increase the process performance is crucial. In the present study, experimental investigation on laser cladding process of AISI 1040 has been performed. Here, numbers of nine experiments were designed and conducted based on L-9 orthogonal array design to study effects of mentioned factors on clad height, clad width, and clad depth. Then the principal component analysis (PCA) was integrated with TOPSIS method for multiresponses optimization of laser cladding process. Here, the PCA was used to find appropriate weight factor related to each quality characteristic. Hereafter, the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) was utilized to find optimal solutions. Confirmatory experiments were carried out to validate optimal results. Results revealed that the laser power has greatest influence on laser cladding quality characteristics. Furthermore, results which were obtained through of confirmatory experiments reveal that the developed method can effectively acquire the optimal combination of laser cladding parameters.