Title
Incorporating domain knowledge into reinforcement learning to expedite welding sequence optimization
Abstract
Welding Sequence Optimization (WSO) is very effective to minimize the structural deformation, however selecting proper welding sequence leads to a combinatorial optimization problem. State-of-the-art algorithms could take more than one week to compute the best sequence for an assembly of eight weld beads which is unrealistic for the early stages of Product Delivery Process (PDP). In this article, we develop and implement a novel Reinforcement Q-learning algorithm for WSO where structural deformation is used to compute reward function. We utilize a thermo-mechanical Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to predict deformation. The exploration–exploitation dilemma has been tackled by domain knowledge driven ε-greedy algorithm into Q-RL which helps to expedite the WSO and we call this novel algorithm as DKQRL. We run welding simulation experiment using well-known Simufact® software on a typical widely used mounting bracket which contains eight welding beads. DKQRL allows the reduction of structural deformation up to ∼71% and it substantially speeds up the computational time over Modified Lowest Cost Search (MLCS), Genetic Algorithm (GA), exhaustive search, and standard RL algorithm. Results of welding simulation demonstrate a reasonable agreement with real experiment in terms of structural deformation.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1016/j.engappai.2020.103612
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Welding sequence optimization,FEA based welding simulation,Reinforcement learning,Structural deformation,Residual stress,Artificial intelligence,Machine learning
Journal
91
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0952-1976
1
0.48
References 
Authors
0
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jesus Romero-Hdz110.48
Baidya Nath Saha2597.95
Seiichiro Tstutsumi310.48
Riccardo Fincato410.48