J Intell Manuf
DOI 10.1007/s10845-015-1187-5
Optimization of laser brazing onto galvanized steel based on
ensemble of metamodels
Qi Zhou1 · Youmin Rong1 · Xinyu Shao1 · Ping Jiang1 · Zhongmei Gao1 ·
Longchao Cao1
Received: 1 November 2015 / Accepted: 22 December 2015
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract Laser brazing (LB) provides a promising way to
join the galvanized steel in automotive industry for its sig-
nificant advantages including high speed, small heat-affected
zone, and high welding seam quality. The process parame-
ters of LB have significant effects on the bead profile and
hence the quality of joint. Since the relationships between
the process parameters and bead profile cannot be expressed
explicitly, it is impractical to determine the optimal process
parameters intuitively. This paper proposes an optimiza-
tion methodology by combining genetic algorithm (GA) and
ensemble of metamodels (EMs) to address the process para-
meters optimization of the bead profile in LB with crimping
butt. Firstly, Taguchi experimental design is adopted to gen-
erate the experimental points. Secondly, the relationships
between process parameters (i.e., welding speed, wire feed
rate, gap) and the bead geometries are fitted using EMs based
on the experimental data. The comparative results show that
the EMs can take advantage of the prediction ability of each
stand-alone metamodel and thus decrease the risk of adopting
inappropriate metamodels. Then, the GA is used to facili-
tate design space exploration and global optimum search.
Besides, the main effects and contribution rates of multiple
process parameters on bead profile are analyzed. Eventually,
the verification experiments are carried out to demonstrate
the effectiveness and reliability of the obtained optimal para-
meters. Overall, the proposed hybrid approach, GA–EMs,
exhibits great capability of guiding the actual LB processing
and improving welding quality.
B Ping Jiang
jiangping@mail.hust.edu.cn
1
The State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing
Equipment and Technology, School of Mechanical Science
and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science &
Technology, Wuhan 430074, People’s Republic of China
Keywords Laser brazing · Bead profile · Ensemble ·
Metamodel · Genetic algorithm · Crimping butt
Introduction
For the automobile industry, there are two main trends in
design of the car body. The first one is to improve corro-
sion resistance by using either aluminum or galvanized steel.
The other one is to reduce the total weight and at the same
time guarantee the structural strength by using light mate-
rials or appropriately selecting the thickness of sheet metal
throughout the car body. With the superiority in terms of cor-
rosion resistance, cost and hardness, galvanized steel might
be more attractive in automotive industry than aluminum in
the future (Sinha et al. 2013; Colombo and Previtali 2014;
Zhao et al. 2012; Rong et al. 2015). However, the welding
stability of galvanized steel process by laser welding and
conventional fusion welding techniques (e.g., tungsten inert
gas arc welding (TIG), metal inert-gas welding (MIG) and
resistance welding) are weak because the evaporation tem-
perature (1179 K) is lower than that of the galvanized steel
(1823 K), which usually causes some porosity defects (Chen
et al. 2009; Qin et al. 2015; Mei et al. 2009; Ruggiero et al.
2011). Fortunately, Laser brazing (LB), which combines the
advantages of laser welding and brazing, provides a promis-
ing way to join the galvanized steel in automotive industry
for its significant advantages including but not limited to high
speed, small heat-affected zone, high welding seam quality
(Nasiri et al. 2013; Chen et al. 2011; Roos and Schmidt 2014).
It is very important to control quality of joint that is highly
relevant to weld bead profile (Zhao et al. 2012; Rong et al.
2015). Generally, many process parameters, (e.g., wire feed
rate, weld speed, prescribed gap, laser power, etc.) have
effects on the quality of joint. However, how to select appro-
123

priate process parameters that can produce required seam
quality for crimping butt of laser brazing on galvanized
steel is rarely reported in automobile industry. Another sit-
uation is that the relationships between the input variables
and bead profile cannot be expressed explicitly (it is actually
a black-box model), which makes it impractical to deter-
mine the optimal process parameters intuitively. Besides,
trial and error methods often lead to sub-optimal solution
and in some extent may result in a tremendous waste of
resources. A promising strategy is to utilize metamodels,
which are also called approximation models as they pro-
vides “model of model”, fitting the relationship between
the input process parameters and the output performance
for the purpose of welding design optimization. Ruggiero
et al. (2011) investigated dissimilar full depth CO2 laser butt
welding of low carbon steel and austenitic steel AISI 316
using RSM. Chaki et al. (2015) integrated Artificial Neural
Networks (ANN) and non-dominated sorting genetic algo-
rithm (NSGA-II) approach for prediction and optimization
of quality characteristics during pulsed Nd:YAG laser cut-
ting. Katherasan et al. (2014) used Artificial Neural Networks
(ANN) during the optimization of Flux cored arc welding
process parameters to obtain desire processing output char-
acteristics. Singh et al. (2014) predicted weld-bead geometry
and hardness profile in ytterbium fiber laser welding of plain
carbon steel (DC05) using neural network (NN) and genetic
algorithms (GA). Lim (2014) combined Kriging metamodel
and GA for welding parameters optimization of TIG weld-
ing onto two thin pieces of titanium sheet metal. Gao et al.
(2013) used radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) to
improve the performance of the Kalman Filtering (KF) algo-
rithm and constructed an adaptive filter to compensate for the
errors of seam tracking. These practices do help designers
grasp the relationships between the input process parame-
ters and output performance and improve the efficiency of
welding design and optimization. However, the lack of suf-
ficient information describing the relationship between the
process parameters and output performance makes it diffi-
cult for engineers to determine which metamodel is the best
to be adopted. In addition, the accuracy of the constructed
stand-alone metamodel largely depends on the current train-
ing sampling set and the problem properties at hand, so it
cannot be guaranteed that the selected metamodel will always
perform the best as another training data available or prob-
lems are changed.
To overcome the above mentioned shortcomings, this
paper proposes a hybrid optimization methodology that com-
bines GA and ensemble of metamodel (EMs) for parameters
optimization of LB. The EMs is adopted to fit the relation-
ships between the process parameters and bead profile, which
aims to take advantage of the prediction ability of stand-alone
metamodels. The GA is used to facilitate design space explo-
ration and global optimum search. The proposed GA–EMs
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J Intell Manuf
methodology is applied to obtain optimum process parame-
ters that can produce required seam quality for crimping butt
of laser brazing on galvanized steel. Firstly, a 3-factor and
5-level experimental program (L 25 35 ) on galvanized steel
with IPG YLR-4000 fiber laser and wire filler CuSi3 has
been conducted. Secondly, the advantages of ensemble of
three stand-alone metamodels, including Kriging, support
vector regression (SVR), and RBF for fitting the relation-
ship between the process parameters and bead profile are
discussed. Thirdly, the main effects and contribution rates
of multiple process parameters on the bead profile are ana-
lyzed. Then, based on the EMs, genetic algorithm is utilized
to solve the LB parameter optimization problem. Finally, the
consistency between the obtained optimum and experiment
results are discussed.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In “Exper-
iment procedure” section, details of the experimental proce-
dure of laser brazing onto galvanized steel are described. The
proposed hybrid optimization methodology is presented in
“Background and proposed approach” section. In “Results
and discussions” section, the prediction ability of ensem-
ble of metamodel and stand-alone metamodel is compared.
Meanwhile, the main effects of multiple process parameters
on the bead profile and verifications of consistency between
the obtained optimum and experiment results are presented.
Finally, in “Conclusion” section, the conclusion remarks and
future work are given.
Experiment procedure
Laser brazing specimen
The workpiece used for welding was a 0.8 mm-thick gal-
vanized DP590 steel. The welding joints were performed
in a crimping butt configuration with specimen sizes of
300 × 100 × 0.8 mm. To eliminate the interference from
oxidation film and prevent the welding bead being polluted
by oil, the specimen have been pretreated or degreased with
acetone before welding.
Procedure of laser brazing
Figure 1 demonstrates the laser brazing system used in this
work. The laser welder adopted here is IPG YLR-4000
ytterbium-doped fiber laser. The maximum average power
of the laser was 4000 W, which was a continuous laser. In
this experiment, the power of the fiber laser was set to be
3200 W. Laser was delivered through the optical fiber to the
laser welder head, where a defocusing lens with the defocus
length of 45 mm was installed. Then the diameter of light
spot was enlarged to about 3.2 mm, which aimed to fully
melt filler wire during the welding process. The wire feeding
J Intell Manuf

Fig. 1 Laser brazing system. a

Laser equipment and b Fiber optics
schematic of the laser brazing
setup
Nozzle Wire feeder
machine
Laser beam
Filler wire

Work piece
Worktable

(a) (b)

Table 1 Chemical
Element Si Al Fe Mn P Pb Sn Zn Cu
concentration of each element in
CuSi3 wire Percent 3.01 0.0042 0.0535 0.98 0.0072 <0.002 0.0248 <0.01 Balance

WT wire feed rate and gap. Considering these two circumstances

(Zhao et al. 2012; Rong et al. 2015): (a) low wire feed rate or
high welding speed are not good for diffusion of liquid filler
ELL ELR wire and may result in incomplete fusion, defects of filled
groove or even spatter (b) excessive wide gap may lead to
dent and collapse, the following bounds are used for process
WB
parameters:

2.6 m/ min ≤ W F ≤ 3.4 m/ min, 0.8 m/ min ≤ W S

Fig. 2 Schematic of the bead profile
machine and the laser welding header were installed on the
robot ABB IRC5 M2004. The filler wire was CuSi3 whose
diameter was 1.6 mm. Table 1 shows the chemical compo-
sition in weight percent of the filler wire. The shielding gas
was not utilized during the welding.
Figure 2 is the schematic of seam geometry, in which the
bead profile is illustrated clearly. WT and WB denote top
width and bottom width of the weld bead, respectively. ELL
and ELR represent the efficient length of connection on the
left side and the right side, respectively.
Experiment design and results
Generally, the process parameters of LB welding, e.g., weld-
ing speed (WS), wire feed rate (WF), gap (GAP), laser power,
torch angle, have influence on the bead profile. According to
a great number of actual tests, primary investigations and
surveys (Li et al. 2007; Tan et al. 2013; Cao et al. 2013;
Lin et al. 2013), LB bead profile is mainly determined by
three welding process parameters including welding speed,
≤ 1.6 m/ min, 0 mm ≤ G A P ≤ 0.8 mm.
The goal of data sampling is to minimize the influence
of errors in physical experiments to the response func-
tions, while allowing the designers to build metamodels
more efficiently (Zadeh et al. 2009). In this work, Taguchi
experimental design (Taguchi 1978) proposed by Taguchi is
adopted to generate the training points as it is able to provide
good uniform and space-filling sample points in the design
space. For each input variables, five-levels with an interval
of 0.2 units are considered, which showed in Table 2. As can
be seen in Table 2, the current problem is a three-factor and
five-level problem, hence, a L25 orthogonal array could be
generated as demonstrated in Table 3. Table 3 illustrates the
total 25 experiments conducted for the optimization of the
input parameters on the bead geometries.
According to the L25 orthogonal array listed in Table 3,
WS and WF were set in the ABB IRC5 M2004 robot and wire
filler machine, and the feeler gauge were used to ensure the
GAP of the crimping butt. The experiment results are listed
in Table 3. In Table 3, the four output seam geometries of LB
were measured on measurement software CSM1 after the
transverse samples were cut from each weldment by electric
cutting machine STDX600. To obtain a clear image of the

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Table 2 Welding parameters and their levels SVR are constructed to estimate the bead geometries of the
Parameters Units Notations Factor levels galvanized steel welded using LB. The obtained ensemble of
metamodels will be used in the LB optimization process if
1 2 3 4 5
their accuracy achieved.
Welding speed m/min WS 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 The remainder of this section describes the proposed LB
Wire feed rate m/min WF 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 process parameters optimization approach in more details as
Gap mm GAP 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 follows: “Stand-alone metamodeling methods” section gives
the background of the three related stand-alone metamodel-
ing techniques, “Ensemble of metamodels” section presents
Table 3 Taguchi L25 design matrix and experimental results the details of how to combining multiple metamodels in
No. WS WF GAP WT WB ELL ELR a weighted-sum formulations, “Genetic algorithm” section
(m/min) (m/min) (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm) gives the main operations of GA and “Steps for the pro-
posed optimization approach” section presents a step-by-step
1 0.8 2.6 0.0 3.43 2.48 4.12 0.61
description of the proposed LB process parameters optimiza-
2 0.8 2.8 0.2 2.55 2.07 3.61 0.95
tion approach.
3 0.8 3.0 0.4 2.37 1.79 4.07 1.26
4 0.8 3.2 0.6 3.32 1.98 4.20 1.03
Stand-alone metamodeling methods
5 0.8 3.4 0.8 3.10 2.26 3.80 1.25
6 1.0 2.6 0.2 2.38 2.29 3.84 3.11
Generally, the relationship between a vector of input vari-
7 1.0 2.8 0.4 2.56 1.93 3.71 0.96
ables x and corresponding output values Y can be expressed
8 1.0 3.0 0.6 2.88 1.93 4.00 0.93
as:
9 1.0 3.2 0.8 2.62 1.86 3.88 1.24
10 1.0 3.4 0.0 2.61 1.86 3.82 0.83
Y = fˆ(x, β) + ε (1)
11 1.2 2.6 0.4 2.73 2.53 3.70 0.85
12 1.2 2.8 0.6 2.59 1.72 3.63 1.28
where fˆ(·) is the approximation model, β represents the
13 1.2 3.0 0.8 3.02 2.94 3.65 1.01
vector of coefficients, ε denotes a stochastic factor. Metamod-
14 1.2 3.2 0.0 2.36 1.33 3.42 1.03
eling technologies differ with each other as to their choices
15 1.2 3.4 0.2 2.46 1.68 3.64 1.11
of approximation models and stochastic process expressions.
16 1.4 2.6 0.6 1.91 0.92 3.24 1.41
In this paper, three related metamodeling methods, includ-
17 1.4 2.8 0.8 2.37 1.76 3.62 1.30 ing Kriging, radial basis function (RBF) and support vector
18 1.4 3.0 0.0 2.10 1.33 3.50 1.09 regression (SVR), are described.
19 1.4 3.2 0.2 1.92 1.60 3.41 1.12
20 1.4 3.4 0.4 2.07 1.81 3.37 1.27
Kriging
21 1.6 2.6 0.8 2.40 1.24 3.50 1.35
22 1.6 2.8 0.0 3.44 1.25 2.23 1.01 Kriging metamodels is an interpolative Bayesian metamodel-
23 1.6 3.0 0.2 1.92 1.443 3.31 1.12 ing technique. It was originated from geo-statistical and used
24 1.6 3.2 0.4 2.16 1.12 3.26 1.24 by Sacks et al. (1989) for predicting the unknown response
25 1.6 3.4 0.6 2.39 2.07 2.41 0.86 at sample points. Kriging treats the observed response as a
combination of a global model and local deviations:

bead profile, all welding seam have been initially rubbed fˆ(x) = p(x) + Z (x) (2)
by different molybdenum sandpaper and cleaned by acetone
before measurement. where p(x) is a known polynomial function, Z (x) is the real-
ization of a stochastic process with mean zero and nonzero
Background and proposed approach covariance. The nonzero covariance of Z (x) is given by:
     
The goal of the proposed approach is to determine the optimal COV Z (xi ) , Z x j = σ 2 R R xi , x j (3)
process parameters of LB by combining the GA and e within
limited experiment resource. The approach starts out with where R is the correlation matrix. R(xi , x j ) is the correla-
generating an initial sample points and conducting experi- tion function between two sample points xi and x j . When
ment at these points. Based on the experiment data, ensemble the Gaussian correlation function is employed, it can be cal-
of three stand-alone metamodels including Kriging, RBF, and culated by:

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K  2 where, x is a vector of design variables, m is the number of
R(θ ) = exp − θk xik − x kj (4) sample points, xi is the ith sample point. x − xi  denotes
k=1
the Euclidean distance between the design variable and the
where K demotes the dimensions of design space and θk sample points given by:
are the unknown correlation parameters to be determined.
Because Kriging is an interpolative Bayesian metamodeling, x − xi  = (x − xi )T (x − xi ) (11)
the model will have no mean square error (MSE) at all sam-
ple points. If the MSE is minimized, the predictor fˆ (x) for φ(·) is a radial basis function. Commonly used radial basis
unobserved points is expressed as: functions include: (1) bi-harmonic, φ (r ) = r (2) cubic,
φ (r ) = (r + c)3 ; (3) thin-plate
√ spline,φ (r ) = r 2 log(r ); (4)

fˆ (x) = β̂ + rT (x) R−1 f − β̂p (5) multiquadric, φ (r ) = r 2 + c2 ; (5) inverse-multiquadric,
 
φ (r ) = √ 21 2 ; (6) Gaussian, φ (r ) = exp −αr 2 , α > 0.
r +c
where f is the column vector of length m that contains the λi are the weight coefficients of the liner combinations can
sample data of the responses, and p is a column vector of be obtained by:
length m that is filled with ones when p(x) is taken as a con-  −1
stant. r T (x) is the correlation vector between an unobserved λi = T  +  T yi (12)
point x and the sample points.
    T where,  are all zero except for the regularization parameters
rT (x) = R x, x 1 , R x, x 2 , · · ·, R x, x N (6) along its diagonal.  is the design matrix can be expressed
as:
The scalar β̂ is estimated using the following equation: ⎛ ⎞
φ(x1 − x1 ) φ(x1 − x2 ) · · · φ(x1 − xm )
⎜ φ(x − x ) φ(x − x ) · · · φ(x − x ) ⎟
β̂ = (pT R−1 p)−1 pT R−1 f ⎜ 2 1 2 2 2 m ⎟
(7) =⎜
⎜ .. .. .. .. ⎟
⎟
⎝ . . . . ⎠
The estimated variance of the output model can be calculated φ(xm − x1 ) φ(xm − x2 ) · · · φ(xm − xm )
by:
(13)
(f − β̂p)T R−1 (f − β̂p) Support vector regression
σ̂ 2 = (8)
N
Support vector regression (SVR) comes from the theory of
The unknown correlation parameters θk are founded using
support vector machines, but adds the capability to approx-
maximum likelihood estimation can be formulated as Wang
imate black box functions. Commonly used SVR is ε-SVR
et al. (2015):
which aims to find a function that has at most ε deviation
 
N ln(σ̂ 2 )+ln|R| from the targets of the training inputs (Clarke et al. 2005).
max () = − 2 (9) For the linear regression case, ε-SVR can be depicted as:
s.t.  > 0
fˆ(x) = w · x + b (14)
where  denotes the vector of θk ,and both σ̂ and R are the
function of .
where w · x is the dot product between w and x. Another
aims of SVR is to make the fˆ(x) to be as flat as possible.
Radial basis function
Flatness in this sense means a small w in Eq. 14. Hence, we
solve the optimization problem described in the following
Radial basis function (RBF) is a type of neural network
equation:
employing a hidden layer of radial units and an output layer
of linear units. Let x = {x1 , x2 . . . xm } be a set of sampling 1
points. Y = {y1 , y2 . . . ym } are the response function values min |w|2
2
at data locations. The RBF metamodels can be specified as a s.t. yi − w · xi  − b ≤ ε (15)
line combination of some RBFs with weight coefficients in
Eq. 10: w · xi  + b − yi ≤ ε


m An assumption made in Eq. 15 is that the prediction errors
fˆ(x) = λi φ(x − xi ) (10) at all sample points are smaller than ε. However, this is not
i=1 always the case and two slack factors can be incorporated

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into the original optimization problem to yield a modified moid and Inhomogeneous polynomial. Then the SVR meta-
formulation (Zhou et al. 2015b): models for nonlinear regression becomes:

1  l 
l
 
min |w|2 + C ξi + ξi∗ fˆ(x) = (δi − δi∗ )k xi · x j + b (20)
2
i=1 i=1
s.t. yi − w · xi  − b ≤ ε + ξi (16)
Ensemble of metamodels
w · xi  + b − yi ≤ ε + ξi∗
ξi , ξi∗ ≥ 0 Comparative studies of accuracy of metamodels have demon-
strated that different metamodels perform well under differ-
where C is a constant value used to balance the flatness and ent conditions (Zhou et al. 2015b; Wang and Shan 2007;
the degree of the tolerated errors. Acar 2015). Arbitrarily selecting a metamodel to fit the rela-
According to Lagrangian theory and the Karush–Kuhn– tionship between the input parameters and output responses
Tucker (KKT) condition, the optimization problem can be may increase the risk of adopting an inappropriate meta-
written in the following dual form: model when considering the following two realities: (a) the
nature of internal structure for the input parameters and
1 
l
   output responses is not a priori and the resource to obtain
max − δi − δi∗ δ j − δ ∗j xi · x j information describing the relationship between input vari-
2
i, j=1
ables and the response values is limited (b) the accuracies of

l
  l
  constructed metamodel depend on the current training data,
−ε δi + δi∗ + yi δi − δi∗ and a different metamodel type may become more accurate
i=1 i=1
(17)
than the selected one with a new available data set. There-

l
  fore, as an alternative to select a stand-alone metamodel, this
s.t. δi − δi∗ = 0
paper fits the relationship between the process parameters
i=1
and bead geometries using EMs, which combine the sepa-
(δi − δi∗ ) ∈ [0, C] rate stand-alone metamodels aiming to take advantage of the
prediction ability of each stand-alone metamodels. Three dif-
The weight vector and corresponding linear regression are ferent stand-alone metamodeling techniques are considered
then obtained through the following expressions: here, they include: Kriging, RBF and SVR. The most com-
monly used EMs constructed method is the weighted average

l
  
l
    ensemble, which is defined as:
w= δi − δi∗ xi , fˆ(x) = δi − δi∗ xi · x j + b
i=1 i=1

3
(18) fˆen (x) = w j fˆj (x) (21)
j=1
Another benefit of the above dual form is that nonlinear
regression can also be used by replacing the dot product where, fˆ(x) is the predicted responses obtained from the
of input vector with kernel functions (Clarke et al. 2005). ensemble metamodel, fˆj (x)( j = 1, 2, 3) are the predic-
Appling the kernel functions in Eq. 18, we obtain: tions obtained using the Kriging, RBF and SVR metamodels,
respectively. w j ( j = 1, 2, 3) are weight factors that deter-
1 
l
   mine the relative contribution of the three metamodels in
max − δi − δi∗ δ j − δ ∗j k xi · x j
2 ensemble. To obtain unbiased response estimations, a con-
i, j=1
straint is posed on weight factors as follows:

l
  
l
 
∗
−ε δi + δi + yi δi − δi∗
(19) 
3
i=1 i=1
wj = 1 (22)

l
  j=1
s.t. δi − δi∗ = 0
i=1 The weight factors can be determined such that the meta-
 
δi − δi∗ ∈ [0, C] model with high accuracy have large weight factors and vice
  versa (Acar and Rais-Rohani 2009; Zhou et al. 2011). In
where k xi · x j denotes the kernel functions. Commonly this paper, the weight factors are determined by minimizing
used kernel functions include: polynomial, Gaussian, Sig- the generalized mean square Leave-one-out (LOO) errors

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Fig. 3 Explanation of the
corresponding relationship
between the design variables
and a chromosome
(GMSE LOO ) of the ensemble metamodels. LOO method is
one of the cross validation methods that can be used for
assessing the accuracy of a metamodel (Aute et al. 2013). The
GMSE LOO for the ensemble of metamodel can be expressed
as:
m 
 2
GMSE LOO = fˆen,−i (xi ) − f (xi ) /m
i=1
where f (xi ) denotes the actual response value at xi ,
fˆen,−i (xi ) denotes the prediction of the response value for
xi using the ensemble of metamodel created based on the
current sampling set with the sample point xi moved out. m
is the total number of the sample points.
Combining the weighted-sum formulations of the ensem-
ble metamodels in Eq. 21 and error prediction metric in
Eq. 23, a constrained minimization problem is established
to select the optimum weight factors. It can be expressed as
follows:
find w j
⎛ ⎞2

m 
3
min GMSE LOO (w j ) = ⎝ w j fˆj (xi )− f (xi )⎠ m
i=1 j=1

3
s.t. wj = 1
i=1
Since the optimization problem in Eq. 24 is not neces-
sary convex, evolutionary algorithms are preferred to be
selected to solve this problem. In this study, genetic algo-
rithms (Coello Coello 2000) is used and the constraint is
processed using penalty function. The details of the opera-
tions of GA are presented in the following section.
Genetic algorithm
GA is one of the most efficient population-based algorithms
and it has been successfully applied in welding optimiza-
tion in recent years (Wang et al. 2013; Islam et al. 2015;
Tan and Hou 2009). Commonly used encoded modes in GA
include binary coding method, floating-point coding method,
and symbolic coding method. In this paper, a binary ver-
sion of the GA is adopted. Each substring, with its length is
20 in a chromosome, corresponds to a design variable. The
corresponding relationship between the design variables and
chromosome can be depicted in Fig. 3.
The main operations of GA include selection, crossover
and mutation, which will be introduced in more details as
follows.
(23)
Selection
Selection operator is a process of choosing the more fit indi-
viduals from the current population according to their fitness
values. Commonly, the fitness value assigned to each individ-
ual according to its design objective function. The selected
probability is in proportion to its fitness value, that is, the
greater the individual fitness value is, the more likely it is
selected. The selected probability of the pth individual is
calculated by:

Na
Pp = f p / fq (25)
q=1

where Na is the total number of individuals in the current
population, f p and f q are the fitness value of the pth and
qth individual, respectively. The basic operators of GA are
performed on the basis of the fitness function evaluation
in maximization problem. Roulette Wheel Selection (RWS)
(24) method is used in the selection operation in which a random
between 0 and 1 is generated equally and regarded as pointer
for identifying the individual to be selected.
Crossover
Crossover is an operation which exchanges partial structure
of the two parent individuals to generate new individuals. In
this paper, the classical single point crossover, in which one
cross point is selected randomly on each of the two selected
parent chromosomes and then strings exchange and recom-
bine at the cross point to produces the children, is adopted.
An illustration of the crossover operation is shown in Fig. 4:
Mutation
Mutation is an operation in which one or more sites on a
selected chromosomal string are converted from 0 to 1 or vice
123

Fig. 4 An illustration of the
crossover operation
Fig. 5 An illustration of the mutation operation
versa. The chromosome is selected randomly based on a low
mutation probability whose value is generally between 0.01
and 0.1. An example of the mutation operation is illustrated
in Fig. 5:
Steps for the proposed optimization approach
The flowchart of the proposed laser optimization approach is
demonstrated in Fig. 6. The details steps are as follows:
Step 1 Define the laser brazing optimization problem
including objective function, design variables and ranges.
In this paper, the objective is to obtain the maximum WT,
WB, ELL and ELR. Three variables include WS, WF and
GAP, with ranges are 2.6 m/ min ≤ W F ≤ 3.4 m/ min,
0.8 m/ min ≤ W S ≤ 1.6 m/ min, 0 mm ≤ G A P ≤
0.8 mm.
Step 2 Adopt Taguchi method for Design of Experiment
(DOE) and conduct the experiment at the generated sam-
ple points to obtain the output responses.
Step 3 Construct ensemble of metamodels for the output
responses. This step can be divided into two steps: (1)
built three stand-alone metamodels (Kriging, RBF, and
SVR) for the response values (2) minimize the general-
ized mean square LOO errors to find the optimum weight
factors by solving the optimization problem in Eq. 24.
Step 4 Check the accuracy criterion. Check whether the
desired level of accuracy is achieved or not. If yes, the
obtained ensemble metamodels can be used for LB opti-
mization, otherwise, go back to Step 2. In this paper,
relative maximum absolute error (RMAE) is used as the
accuracy metric.
Step 5 Implement GA to obtain the optimum process
parameters. During the GA optimization, the fitness val-
ues assigned to the populations are according to predicted
value using ensemble of metamodels.
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J Intell Manuf
Step 6 Check the termination criteria. Two stopping
conditions are considered in this paper: (1) the relative
distance between the optimal process parameters of two
successive iterations is below 1e − 3 (2) the pre-specified
maximum number of iterations is reached.
Step 7 Output the optimum process parameters and verify
their validity via real-life experiments.
Results and discussions
Comparison and discussion of metamodel predictions
Accuracy measures
Two different accuracy metrics are adopted to assess the accu-
racies of each metamodel: (1) root mean square error (RMSE)
(2) relative maximum absolute error (RMAE). RMSE reveals
the overall accuracy of the metamodel, while the RMAE
reflects the local accuracy of the metamodel (Zhou et al.
2015a). The lower the values of RMSE/RMAE, the more
accurate the metamodel. Expressions of these two accuracy
metrics are defined as follows:
  
RMAE = max  yi − ŷi  /yi , i = 1, . . . , N


1  N
RMSE =  (yi − ŷi )2 (26)
N
i=1
where N represents the total number of test points; yi is the
actual response at test point i; ŷi is the predicted response at
test point i.
Comparison and discussion of metamodel predictions
To calculate the two accuracy metrics, additional 7 randomly
validation experiments are carried out under new test condi-
tions, but are within the design domain defined earlier. The
accuracy results of different metamodeling approaches are
summarized in Table 4. In Table 4, the best results for each
model type are printed in bold, while the worst results for each
model type are printed in bolditalic. Three intuitive conclu-
sions can be drawn from Table 5, i.e., (1) The metamodels
constructed by EMs nerve be the worst one among the four
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Fig. 6 Flowchart for the

proposed approach

Table 4 Comparison of
Bead profile Error metrics Kriging RBF SVR EMs
accuracies of stand-alone and
ensemble of metamodels for WT RMAE 0.3914 0.4333 0.3988 0.3553
bead profile
RMSE 0.7401 0.8268 0.8978 0.6958
WB RMAE 1.7943 1.6579 1.6311 1.5755
RMSE 0.8124 1.0905 0.8359 0.7862
ELL RMAE 0.5541 0.4727 0.6272 0.5456
RMSE 0.9100 0.8899 0.8585 0.8081
ELR RMAE 0.6249 0.6423 0.6382 0.605
RMSE 0.8808 0.939 1.0549 0.8625

metamodeling approaches for all the bead geometries, while
other three stand-alone metamodels are the worst at least for
one output response, which indicates that the proposed EMs
metamodeling can decrease the risk of adopting an inappro-
priate metamodel (2) For most test cases (3/4), metamodels
constructed by EMs are demonstrated to be the bests in terms
of both local and global accuracy, illustrating that the EMs
can take advantage of the prediction ability of the stand-alone
metamodels (3) The accuracy performance of the three stand-
alone metamodels (Kriging, RBF, SVR) constructed for bead
geometries are close. Fig. 7 demonstrates the 3D surface of
the ensemble of metamodels for WT, WB, ELL and ELR.
In Fig. 7, the red points represent the sample points used to
construct the EMs.

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Fig. 7 The EMs for four different bead geometries. a Ensemble of metamodels for WT, b ensemble of metamodels for WB, c ensemble of
metamodels for ELL and d ensemble of metamodels for ELR
Main effects and contribution rates analysis of different
parameters on bead profile
The main effect of a factor on response is defined as the
average response of all the tests for a factor at a certain level.
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is an effective method used
for obtaining the main effects of factors on responses (Tamrin
et al. 2014). In this subsection, ANOVA is adopted to analyze
the main effects of LB process parameters (i.e., GAP, WF
and WS) on bead geometries including WT, WB, ELL and
ELR. The main effects of each process parameter on bead
geometries are plotted in Fig. 8. It can be concluded in Fig. 8
that the bead geometries are directly related to the GAP, WF
and WS. From Fig. 8a, it is clear that as the GAP increase and
the WS decease the WT will increase. A similar conclusion
can also be made from Fig. 8b that as the GAP increase and
the WS decease the WB will increase. While, for the WF,
its effects on WT and WB are just the opposite. As can be
seen in the Fig. 8c, GAP and WF slightly affect ELL, while
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WS is the most significant factor associated with the ELL.
Large WS will bad for the ELL. As shown in Fig. 8d, a low
magnitude of WF and a large value of WS are more likely
to lead to a satisfied ELR. Meanwhile, the effect of GAP on
ELR is not obvious.
Besides the main effects of the input process parameters
on output performance, the contribution rates of the process
parameters and their interactions contribution rates of bead
geometries are also analyzed. Fig. 9 demonstrates the contri-
bution rates of the process parameters to bead geometries.
The positive contribution rates indicates that their corre-
sponding output response will increase with an increase in
the discussed process parameters; otherwise decreases. The
magnitude of the bars demonstrated its degree of importance
to the bead geometries. As illustrated in Fig. 9a, the WS has
the most significant negative contribution rate to the WT,
followed by the interaction contribution rate of WF and WS
and the interaction contribution rate of the GAP and WS. The
GAP has the most positive contribution rate to WT, which
J Intell Manuf
Fig. 8 Main effects of each process parameters on bead geometries. a Main effects on WT, b main effects on WB, c main Effects on ELL and d
main effects on ELR
indicates that it will be very effective to improve WT by
increasing GAP. As shown in Fig. 9b, it can be observed that
the interaction of the GAP and WS has the most significant
positive contribution rates to the WB, while the WF and WS
have negative contribution rates to the WB. It can be seen in
Fig. 9c that the WS is the most significant factor associated
with the ELL, which indicates that decrease the WS will be
very helpful to improve the magnitude of ELL. Meanwhile,
it can also be concluded that the ELL can be improved by
increasing the GAP and WF. Fig. 9d demonstrates that three
process parameters have negative contribution rates to ELR,
among which the effect of WF on ELR is the most obvi-
ous. The interaction contribution rates of two of them have
positive contribution rates to ELR.
Optimization results and verification experiments
In this section, GA is adopted to solve the LB parameter
optimization problem. The settings for the GA in the opti-
mization problems are listed in Table 5. Four independent
optimization problems are implemented firstly. They include
maximize WT, WB, ELL, and ELR. Fitness values of them in
GA optimization process are predicted by ensemble of meta-
models constructed in the previous steps. In this paper, the
computational platform with a 3.30 GHz Intel(R) Core(T M)
i3 CPU and 4 GB RAM is used. Fig. 10 demonstrates the
iteration curves of each output parameters. The optimal para-
meters, the corresponding outputs and the execution time for
solving each optimization problem are listed in Table 6.
123

Fig. 9 Contribution rates of the process parameters to bead geometries.
a Contribution rate of WT, b Contribution rate of WB, c Contribu-
tion rate of ELL and Contribution rate of ELR. The blue bars denote
that the manufacture parameters have positive contribution rate to the
output performance, while the red bars denotes that the manufacture
Table 5 Settings of GA in the LB optimization problem
Parameters Population Max Crossover Mutation
size iterations probability probability
Values 40 500 0.7 0.02
It is important to point out that the qualities of the weld
bead in laser brazing are influenced by all the bead geometries
including WT, WB, ELL, and ELR. In fact, since the mechan-
ical property are jointly affected by these four geometry
sizes, the optimal process parameters of these bead geome-
tries will be difficult to separately guide the laser brazing
process. Hence, the sums of the four bead geometries are
defined to make it possible for actual welding process para-
meter optimization. The sums of bead geometries (SBG) can
be expressed as follows:
SBG = WT + WB + ELL + ELR (27)
In Eq. 27, we assume that the WT, WB, ELL, and ELR have
equal effects on the quality of Laser brazing. The optimal
results for SBG are also demonstrated in Table 6.
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parameters have negative contribution rate to the output performance.
The symbol ∩ indicates the interaction contribution rate to the output
performance for different combination types of manufacture parameters
(Color figure online)
According to the discussion in “Main effects and contri-
bution rates analysis of different parameters on bead profile”
section, the effects of process parameters on ELL resem-
ble that of ELR, and the effects of process parameters on
WT are similar to that of WB, the verification experiments
for Optimal process parameters of WT, ELR, and SBG are
carried out to verify the accuracy of the optimal results. The
bead geometries of three verification experiments are demon-
strated in Fig. 11. As shown in Fig. 11a, the optimum value
of WT is 3.13 mm compared with the experiment result of
WT is 3.50 mm, with the relative error is 10.57 % attributing
to some experiment errors and measurement errors coming
from torch angle, defocus length, fluctuation of process, etc.
The experiment value of ELR is 1.88 mm shown in Fig 11b,
which is almost the same as the optimal result. As illustrated
in Fig 11c, the optimum value of SBG is 11.20 mm compared
with the experiment result of SBG is 10.76 mm, with the rel-
ative error between the experiments result and optimal result
is about 5 %, which indicates that the prediction accuracy
of proposed ensemble of metamodels can meet the need of
actual LB process optimization.
To demonstrate the quality of bead shape, the
obvious defects of bead shape for the above optimal
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Fig. 10 Iteration curves of different bead geometries using GA. a The optimal curve of WT, b the optimal curve of WB, c the optimal curve of
ELL and d the optimal curve of ELR

Table 6 optimal process parameters and corresponding bead geome- WT and ELR. Hence, optimizing the sums of the four bead
tries geometries is more suitable for actual LB process parameter
Bead Optimum WS WF GAP Computational optimization.
geometries (mm) (m/min) (m/min) (mm) times (s)

WT 3.13 0.80 3.2 0.60 48.3

WB 2.36 1.18 3.0 0.80 41.8
Conclusion
ELL 4.15 0.80 2.6 0.80 44.0
In this work, a hybrid optimization methodology that com-
ELR 1.83 1.00 2.6 0.20 40.2
bines GA and EMs is proposed for parameters optimization
SBG 11.20 0.95 2.6 0.21 154.2
of laser brazing. The proposed methodology has been suc-
cessfully applied to improve the quality of the weld joint
results are obtained by using metallographic microscope through optimizing the bead geometry about crimping butt
LWD300LMDT at 500x, shown in the Fig 12, As illustrated of the LB. In addition, the main effects and contribution rates
in Fig 12, the obvious defects for the optimal results are of multiple process parameters on bead geometries are ana-
few in number. Besides, the defect for the optimal results of lyzed. The following conclusions are drawn from the above
SBG is apparently smaller than those in optimal results of investigation:

123

Fig. 11 Verification of bead geometries for the optimal results. a Experiment values of the optimal result for WT, b experiment values of the
optimal result for ELR and c experiment values of the optimal result for SBG
Fig. 12 Obvious defects of bead shape for the optimal results. a Bead shape of the optimal result for WT, b bead shape of the optimal result for
ELR and c bead shape of the optimal result for SBG
1. In terms of local and overall accuracy, the prediction
capability of the ensemble of metamodels significantly
outperforms the stand alone metamodel. Arbitrarily
selecting metamodels to approximate the relationship
between the input LB process parameters and output
responses increases the risk of adopting an unsatisfactory
metamodel. Thus, the ensemble of metamodels accords
with “insurance policy” mode and hold great potential in
approximating these black box problems.
2. By ANOVA, it is found that (a) WS has the most signifi-
cant positive contribution rate to the WT, WB and ELL.
Meanwhile, a small value of WS is more likely to lead to
satisfied bead geometries (b) GAP has the most positive
contribution rate to WT, WB and ELL, while its effect
on ELR is not obvious (c) WF is the main factor that
affects the ELR and decrease the WF will very helpful to
improve the magnitude of ELR.
3. The process parameters of LB onto galvanized steel
are optimized by GA–EMs. Verification experiments
have been carried out according to the obtained opti-
mal process parameters, which verify the reliability of
the obtained optimal process parameters. Overall, the
proposed hybrid approach, GA–EMs exhibits great capa-
bility of guiding the actual LB processing and improving
welding quality.
As part of future work, different fidelity models will be incor-
porated into LB process parameter optimization to make a
trade-off between high accuracy and low expense, i.e., com-
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J Intell Manuf
putational simulation model can be taken as a low fidelity
model that is used to reflect the most prominent charac-
teristics of the LB bead geometries at a considerably less
computationally demanding, while, a small number of real-
life experiments are used to guarantee the accuracy.
Acknowledgments This research has been supported by the National
Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China under Grant No.
2014CB046703, the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(NSFC) under Grant Nos. 51505163, 51421062 and 51323009, and the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, HUST: Grant
No. 2014TS040. The authors also would like to thank the anonymous
referees for their valuable comments.
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