Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115

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Optics and Laser Technology

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Full length article

Combined GA-ANN approach for prediction of HAZ and bearing strength in T

laser drilling of GFRP composite
⁎ ⁎
Ali Solati , Mohsen Hamedi , Majid Safarabadi
School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

H I GH L IG H T S

• The HAZ and maximum bearing strength were predicted in laser drilling of GFRP by GA-ANN.
• The HAZ extension was measured by the SEM micrographs.
• The relationship between the HAZ and the bearing strength was discussed.
• The bearing strength was compared for laser drilled and conventionally drilled samples.
• An improvement was obtained by the GA-ANN model in comparison to the trial-and-error method.

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Recently, an increasing interest has been emerged on nontraditional drilling methods of FRP materials. This
Laser drilling paper aims to study two critical quality criteria pertaining to both surface quality and mechanical properties of
FRP laser drilled GFRP laminates. The effect of major laser drilling parameters was investigated on the HAZ and
HAZ bearing strength through utilizing the combined GA-ANN approach. At first, the experimental design was per-
Bearing strength
formed based on a full factorial design with different process parameters, later on the experimental results were
GA
used to develop a GA-ANN model. The GA was integrated to the ANN model to determine the optimal ANN
ANN
architecture through optimizing the number of hidden layer neurons, momentum coefficient and learning rate.
The effectiveness of the models was ultimately evaluated on the basis of experimental data and statistical
analysis. It was found that the GA-ANN method could predict the HAZ and bearing strength more accurately than
trial-and-error ANN. Furthermore, the SEM micrographs from the contact area of the bearing tests were dis-
cussed and compared with mechanical drilling method. The results drawn from this study helps to better un-
derstanding of the laser drilling process of FRP materials and for predicting the mechanical properties of laser
drilled FRP laminates applicable in aircraft part manufacturing.

1. Introduction
Fiber reinforced polymer material (FRP) is one of the modern
composite materials which has been employed in many industries such
as automobile, aviation, aerospace and electronics due to having a very
high strength to weight ratio. One of the well-known and popular types
of FRPs is the glass fiber reinforced polymers because of their cost ef-
fectiveness and availability as well as high mechanical properties. One
of the important problems for employing FRP materials arises when
machining these materials for joining or trimming the manufactured
laminates. This problem is due to heterogenic and non-isotropic nature
of these materials. In fact, in conventional drilling, the thrust force
exerts a variety of faults in the workpiece such as: fiber pullout,
delamination, fuzzing, spalling, matrix cracking, tool wear and thermal
degradation [1–7]. Some researchers began to work on unconventional
machining techniques in order to decrease or eliminate the mentioned
defects. Among these techniques, the WJM [8], USM/vibration assisted
machining [9,10] and laser machining [11] have been the most widely
methods adopted. However, each of these methods have their own
limitations. Even though, water-jet cutting is a very fast machining
technique, it causes large delamination especially thin glass fiber re-
inforced polymer (GFRP) laminates, and the moisture absorbed by the
GFRP reduces the mechanical strength of the laminate. The USM ma-
chining leads to higher surface quality, although, it has very low cutting
speeds and is not considered economical.
The laser cutting is one of the promising methods for machining FRP

⁎
Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: asolati@ut.ac.ir (A. Solati), mhamedi@ut.ac.ir (M. Hamedi).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optlastec.2018.12.016
Received 12 August 2018; Received in revised form 2 November 2018; Accepted 15 December 2018
Available online 28 December 2018
0030-3992/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A. Solati et al.
Table 1
Thermal physical properties of fiber and matrix materials [11,16–18].
Density (g/ Decomposition Coefficient of thermal
cm3) temperature (K) expansion (m/m·K) × 10−6
Glass fiber 2.55 2570 5 1
Epoxy 1.2 700 65
materials particularly for thin laminates where conventional drilling is
less efficient. However, there are some defects that need to be studied
and minimized among which the most important is heat affected zone
(HAZ) width which in turn leads to decrease in mechanical strength of
the laminate [12–15]. The purpose of the laser machining is to mini-
mize the thermal damage on the machining area as well as maintaining
the machining time as low as possible. The most important laser ma-
chining parameters are the laser power, cutting speed, gas pressure,
focal point position and frequency. Trepanning laser drilling is one of
the methods to drill a laminate and it offers higher surface quality and
lower taper angle as compared to the percussion drilling. The CO2 and
Nd:YAG lasers are commonly used for trepanning. When a CO2 laser is
used to cut the FRP laminate, a high heat input is introduced to the
material causing a large vicinity of the polymer resin to vaporize
leading to matrix recession and HAZ. Fiber and matrix have different
physical, thermal and mechanical properties, thus the energy required
for decomposition of fibers is different from the resin material. The
physical properties of glass fibers and epoxy resin are presented in
Table 1.
Furthermore, the HAZ in laser cutting of GFRP would be non-uni-
form as the heat conduction parallel to the glass fibers orientation is
approximately 10 times higher than the matrix as indicated in Table 1.
During laser cutting, when the temperature on the workpiece reaches
the decomposition temperature of the resin matrix, the fibers are still
solid, this results in removal of the resin surrounding the fibers and
consequently fiber extrusion. Moreover, when the temperature reaches
the vaporization temperature of the glass fibers, the generated heat is
much greater than the vaporization temperature of the resin matrix,
therefore the resin is vaporized or melted in the vicinity of the cutting
kerf which is called HAZ [12]. Moreover, the difference between the
heat conduction coefficient of the fibers and matrix causes the ma-
chined surface to have higher HAZ along the fiber orientation and lower
HAZ perpendicular to the fiber orientation.
Some of the researches have focused on improving the laser cut
surface features such as HAZ, surface roughness, taper angle and kerf
width in laser cutting of GFRP laminates through utilizing different
techniques. Patel et al. [19] adopted regression analysis and artificial
neural network (ANN) as well as ANN-fuzzy logic to develop a model
for HAZ extension. The results revealed that their models were able to
predict the kerf width by 95% confidence. Choudhury and Chuan [20]
performed single-pass and double-pass laser cutting on 3 mm, 4 mm and
5 mm thick GFRP composite. It was observed that the surface roughness
in double-pass cutting was much better and the surface roughness was
increased by increasing the cutting speed and material thickness. Lower
surface roughness and kerf width were realized by applying smaller
nozzle diameter. The kerf width was proportional to nozzle diameter
and thickness of the material and inversely proportional to the cutting
speed. Cenna et al. [21] studied the laser-GFRP/AFRP material inter-
action theoretically and developed a model. Their model took into ac-
count the thermal properties of the material, absorption coefficient of
the laser beam, and spatial distribution of the laser beam. They reported
that the developed model was able to predict the kerf width, material
removal rate (MRR), and transferred energy. A 1.5 kW continuous CO2
laser was used with laser power of 600–1000 W. The HAZ extension was
studied by Yung et al. [13] in UV-YAG laser drilling of GFRP plates. The
effects of different laser parameters were studied on the HAZ and it was
found that the lower laser power and repetition rate leads to better
Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115
Thermal conductivity Specific heat Thermal diffusivity Heat of vaporization
(W/(m·K)) capacity (J/kg K) (cm2/s) × 10−3 (J/g)
850 4.61 31,000
0.1 1100 0.76 1100
surface quality. The results were obtained by applying optical and
scanning electronic microscopy.
CO2 laser in continuous mode was utilized with power of 1000 W
and 1500 W for laser grooving by Pan and Hocheng [22] and a nu-
merical model was developed. They carried out grooving operation on
GFRP laminate using power ranging between 350–1500 W and speed of
2.5–110 mm/s using nitrogen as assist gas. The results stated that the
numerical model and the experimental results were in good agreement
for predicting the HAZ. Fatimah, Ishak, and Aqida [23] studied the
effect of beam mode and focal length on the cutting quality by em-
ploying a low power laser (30 W) to cut through a 2.5 mm thick GFRP
laminate. They reported that the beam mode had a major effect on the
spot size, MRR and the surface roughness. Hejjaji et al. [5] compared
the surface quality (taper angle, kerf width, surface roughness, HAZ and
damage factor) in glass and carbon FRPs after laser drilling versus
conventional drilling. The input parameters for laser drilling were the
laser power and cutting speed while the feed rate and spindle speed
were selected as input parameters for the conventional drilling. It was
concluded that surface roughness values for laser drilled specimens
were higher than conventionally-drilled ones. Furthermore, GFRPs
displayed less machining damage as compared to CFRPs after laser
drilling. Moreover, a few studies have been conducted recently on the
effect of adding different nano-materials to improve the surface char-
acteristics of laser drilled/machined FRP laminates [24–26].
A few of investigations were dedicated to improve the mechanical
properties of fiber reinforced polymer composites after laser cutting or
drilling but to the best of authors’ knowledge, no study has been per-
formed on the GFRP material. Lambiase and Durante [27] compared
the delamination factor and mechanical properties of the holes pro-
duced by conventional drilling and punching on GFRP laminates. Dif-
ferent punch-die clearances were applied for punching operation.
Tensile test with central hole showed a trivial difference between
drilled hole and punched hole with clearance of 0.1 mm. 5% difference
was reported for maximum bearing strength between drilled and pun-
ched holes compared to the maximum bearing strength. The effect of
high power laser cutting was investigated on HAZ and mechanical
properties of CFRP laminate by Herzog et al. [28]. They employed
different laser systems to cut a 1.5 mm thick CFRP laminate. The op-
timum laser conditions were achieved and compared with water-jet
cutting. The tensile strength was higher with a pulsed Nd:YAG laser, a
disk laser and a CO2 laser (1000 MPa, 950 MPa and 900 MPa, respec-
tively) which were all above the manufacturer declared tensile strength
for the laminate i.e. 750 MPa. Li et al. [29] investigated the UV laser
machining of CFRP laminates. They reported that the HAZ was mini-
mized to 50 µm through parameter optimization and shortening the
laser–material interaction time and new method of optimizing the laser
traces spacing. The bearing strength tests revealed that the laser drilled
holes have the same bearing strength as conventionally-drilled holes.
The difference was observed regarding the location of failure which was
found to be at matrix in mechanically-drilled samples and in contrast, at
fibers in the root of HAZ in laser drilled samples.
From the literature it can be noted that the HAZ is an important
quality indicator of the drilled hole in terms of surface integrity, also,
the bearing strength can be considered as one of the key characteristics
for determining the mechanical properties of the drilled FRP laminates.
In light of the mentioned literature, it can be concluded that none of the
studies which have been published so far, aimed to improve the surface
105
A. Solati et al.
quality criteria and mechanical properties of the GFRP laminates, si-
multaneously. Moreover, the evolutionary algorithms have not been
applied in laser drilling of FRP materials despite the capability of sig-
nificant improvement in the response parameters. It is also noteworthy
that, to the best of authors’ knowledge, the pin bearing strength of laser
drilled GFRP laminates have not been addressed or compared with
conventional drilling, in previous studies. Therefore, in this paper the
laser drilling was carried out based on full factorial design of experi-
ments using different process parameters, the result of which is then fed
to a hybrid genetic algorithm/artificial neural network (GA-ANN)
model to predict the response parameters (HAZ and bearing strength).
The results were compared with the conventional drilling and the SEM
analysis results were discussed for the contact area of the bearing tests.
2. Experimental
A glass fiber reinforced polymer laminate of 1.2 mm thick was used
comprising 4 layers of plain woven E-glass of 200 g/m2 fibers. The hand
layup process was employed to make the laminates with epoxy EPL
1012 resin and a resin to hardener weight ratio of 85:15, recommended
by the manufacturer. Resin and hardener were stirred using a labora-
tory mixer for 5 min at 300 rpm at 22 °C. The woven fibers were stacked
with identical fiber orientation for all layers. The glass transition tem-
perature for the resin and the gel time at 20 °C and 65% relative hu-
midity were 100 °C and 35 min, respectively. Upon completion of the
layup process of the layers, the assembly was put under pressure of
2 MPa for 24 h at room temperature and then cured in the ambient
temperature for one week to attain its optimum mechanical properties.
Before the layup, the fabric and resin and after layup, the laminate was
precisely weighed to assure 40% fiber to resin weight fraction. A void
measurement was performed according to ASTM D2734 standard and
the average void volume fraction was measured 4%. The void content
was calculated through the following equation [30]:
Td − Md
V= × 100
Td (1)
where V is the void content (vol.%), Md is the measured density (g/
cm3), and Td is the theoretical density (g/cm3).
The bearing test specimens were cut from the laminate via a guil-
lotine and were tested according to ASTM D 5961. In order to make
bearing test specimens, a 6 mm hole was laser drilled on the
135 mm × 36 mm specimens. The mechanical properties of the primary
GFRP laminate before laser drilling were evaluated as indicated in
Table 2. Pure epoxy resin according to ISO 527-4 and flexural strength
according to ASTM D790 were also tested and the results are indicated
in Table 2. Each test was repeated for 5 times and the average value was
reported.
Since the information about CO2 laser drilling of GFRP material was
not sufficient, initial feasibility study was performed to determine the
range of each parameter which leads to a through cut in the material.
The technical specification of continuous CO2 laser source is shown in
Table 3. The assist gas was provided to the cutting zone using a coaxial
flow of 99.9% pure argon aiming to remove the cutting remainders and
facilitate the heat dissipation. The focal position of the laser beam was
on the top surface of the laminate to ensure the maximum power
density on the top surface. This was accomplished through adjusting the
distance between the nozzle head and the material surface using a
Table 2
Mechanical properties of the base GFRP laminate before drilling.
Material property Test standard Value
Young modulus [GPa] ASTM D3039M 19
Tensile strength [MPa] ASTM D3039M 255
Flexural strength [MPa] ASTM D790 372
Epoxy resin ISO 527-4 78
106
Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115
Table 3
Continuous CO2 laser source specification.
Laser type CO2
Wavelength (µm) 10.64
Mean power (W) 400
Focus diameter (µm) 100
Lens focal length (mm) 200
Standoff distance (mm) 0.5
special gauge before starting the cutting process. The minimum laser
spot size (i.e. 0.1 mm) on the material surface was ensured while the
focal position and laser spot size were kept constant throughout the
entire process.
For HAZ study and bearing test sample preparation, holes of 6 mm
diameter were made on the GFRP laminate through single pass tre-
panning drilling method using a continuous wave CO2 laser. Fig. 1(a)
depicts the experimental setup of laser cutting.
Moreover, mechanical drilling was employed using 6 mm brad and
spur drill bit (Fig. 1(b)) through a CNC machining center in order to
compare the laser drilling results with conventional drilling method.
The spindle speed and the feed rate for the tests were selected 2500 rpm
and 100 mm/min, respectively to achieve minimum delamination and
least surface roughness according to Palanikumar [31]. The mechanical
drilling experiment was replicated five times and the mean value of
bearing strength was recorded.
2.1. Testing method
The heat affected zone (HAZ) which is the damage width or the
width of the burnt area on the top surface of the holes was measured on
each of the produced holes using SEM imaging and image analysis with
5 replications. The HAZ was measured by fitting two circles on the
inner and outer limits of the damaged zoned on the top surface of the
laminate and the difference between the radiuses of the two circles was
reported as the HAZ. Fig. 2 depicts a schematic view of HAZ mea-
surement method and actual SEM image of HAZ.
Bearing tests were performed according to ASTM D 5961 M stan-
dard [32] as presented in Fig. 3. The bearing test specimens were cut
out from the primary laminate parallel to the fiber orientation. The
laser drilling was then carried out to make a 6 mm hole on the spe-
cimen. In Fig. 3(a) and (b), the test specimen geometry is shown. The
specimens were loaded on the hole using a through-hardening steel pin
and a double shear fixture as indicated in Fig. 4. The load was applied
using an Instron Type 4208 universal testing machine, in room tem-
perature and 2 mm/min Cross-head speed till the pin displacement
reached 6 mm from the starting position or the load was dropped. Five
samples were tested for each experiment and the average value of the
maximum peak stresses was considered as bearing strength. To obtain
the maximum bearing stress, the maximum bearing load was divided by
the load bearing area (σb = Fmax /Dtop × t ).
3. Design of experiments
A full factorial experimental design with 3 factors and 3 levels was
adopted in this study to investigate the effect of different process
parameters on the HAZ extent and the bearing strength. The laser
drilling parameters applied in this study are: laser power (P), cutting
speed (S), and gas pressure (GP) and three levels were taken into ac-
count for each parameter [33]. To ensure that the specified parameter
ranges can result in a through cut in the material, some preliminary
experiments were performed to identify the acceptable range for each
parameter resulting in a through cut. The design of experiments table
was created considering the acceptable range of each parameter
(Table 4). After the drilling process, the experimental results were
measured and they are reported in Table 5. It is noteworthy that the
A. Solati et al.
Fig. 1. (a) Experimental setup of laser drilling process (b) Brad and Spur Point drill bit used for conventional drilling.
Fig. 2. Schematic and SEM image of HAZ measurement method.
experiments were performed in a randomized order to reduce the effect
of uncontrollable experimental conditions that can influence the results
of the experiments and avoid biased experimental results.
4. Method of research
The full factorial experimental methodology was adopted as a basis
for acquiring the data for neural network training. This leads to better
predictions compared to the neural networks which are based on other
experimental methodologies as all of the parameter combinations
within the parameter space are generated. Thus, this method was em-
ployed to predict the different surface quality and mechanical proper-
ties of the laser drilled holes on GFRP laminates.
4.1. Genetic algorithm
Genetic algorithm is a meta-heuristic, population based, searching
algorithm based on natural selection [34,35]. In this method, each in-
dividual in the population is a solution and by reproduction of the in-
dividuals, the solution should converge to the best one. An individual
consists of five genes which are: number of hidden layer neurons,
107
Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115
learning rates for hidden and output layers, and momentum coefficients
of hidden and output layers formed according to the following binary
code:
z = (d1 d2 d3 d 4 d5) (2)
where z represents an individual and d1 to d5 are binary numbers for
number of hidden layer neurons, learning rates for hidden and output
layers and momentum coefficients of hidden and output layers.
A population includes a specific number of individuals, which could
be demonstrated as vector Z = (z1, z2, z3, … , zi) in which i denotes the
number of population. Three operators were adopted in the GA in-
cluding selection, crossover and mutation in order to generate new
chromosomes with better fitness. Selection is the operator which selects
the chromosomes with the better fitness based on the selection criteria
defined in the algorithm. An individual with higher fitness has more
probability to be selected. Fitness can be calculated by Ci = 1/E for
each individual in which E is the error computed as root mean square
error as expressed in Eq. (7) except that it is calculated for the entire
population.
Selection operator moves the selected chromosomes directly to the
next generation. Each solution is evaluated in terms of its fitness to the
objective function. The fitness determines the rank of each solution and
its probability to be use in cross-over. In crossover operator, two parent
chromosomes are merged, through substituting corresponding seg-
ments of the parents to form new solutions i.e. offspring, which makes
the probability of presence of elite chromosomes higher in the next
generation. Different types of cross-over can be defined such as single
point and two points cross over, however, a random cross-over point
from two parents was adopted in this study. For improvement of the GA
algorithm, the mutation operator was modified to make random
changes to the chromosome features to avoid local optimum. More
detailed information can be found in other studies [36,37].
4.2. Artificial neural network
The relationship of process parameters with response values can be
very complex in laser drilling of FRP materials. Developing a simple
mathematical model can be inaccurate for this process. ANN, on the
Fig. 3. Bearing sample prepared according to
ASTM D 5961M.
A. Solati et al. Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115

Fig. 4. Configuration and fixture for double shear bearing test [32].

Table 4 Table 5
Laser drilling parameters and their levels. The design of experiments and associated results.
Parameter Levels Standard Run order Laser Cutting Assist gas HAZ Bearing
order power speed pressure (mm) strength
1 2 3 (W) (mm/s) (bar) BS (MPa)

Laser power (W), P 160 180 200 12 1 180 4 4 0.531 148.67

cutting speed (mm/s), S 4 6 8 13 2 180 6 2 0.453 152.39
Gas pressure (bar), GP 2 3 4 27 3 200 8 4 0.417 153.65
4 4 160 6 2 0.356 157.39
22 5 200 6 2 0.482 150.38
8 6 160 8 3 0.291 160.60
contrary accounts for complicated non-linear interactions between
5 7 160 6 3 0.311 158.81
input and output parameters [38,39]. Thus, the back propagation (BP) 19 8 200 4 2 0.636 141.34
neural network is applied in this study to establish the relational model 17 9 180 8 3 0.382 155.58
for laser drilling of GFRP composite. Many types of neural networks 21 10 200 4 4 0.611 146.06
have been developed and multilayer feed forward is one of the most 20 11 200 4 3 0.612 145.73
6 12 160 6 4 0.333 158.45
famous among them. In this method, hidden nodes, also known as
15 13 180 6 4 0.420 152.69
neurons connect the multiple layers to one another through identical 1 14 160 4 2 0.389 155.55
weights [40]. In order to train the network properly, one appropriate 25 15 200 8 2 0.412 153.73
learning algorithm must be adopted. One of the commonly used algo- 26 16 200 8 3 0.389 155.51
rithms which minimizes the ANN error is back-propagation. Within 11 17 180 4 3 0.511 150.17
16 18 180 8 2 0.405 155.46
each node, there is a built-in transfer function which is commonly 24 19 200 6 4 0.472 150.91
sigmoidal and transforms the input data. 3 20 160 4 4 0.371 155.75
In this method, the input values are sent forward and the difference 2 21 160 4 3 0.413 155.11
between the predicted and actual data is calculated as the errors, which 10 22 180 4 2 0.524 150.14
18 23 180 8 4 0.413 153.81
are then transmitted backwards to the previous layers until they reach
14 24 180 6 3 0.432 152.50
insignificant values. The weights can be adjusted iteratively through 23 25 200 6 3 0.459 152.35
this procedure. As long as the convergence of predicted and actual data 7 26 160 8 2 0.311 158.52
is not met, the iteration continues. This is named as the learning phase 9 27 160 8 4 0.295 159.27
of the ANN where a fitness function is created relating the input
parameters and the output quality criteria.
models, the back-propagation neural networks (BPNN) are the most
widely employed ones. This network contains a multilayer feed forward
4.3. Combined GA-ANN optimization method neural network comprises a multilayer feed forward neural network
which is trained by the error BP algorithms. Although this type of al-
Having considered different types of artificial neural network gorithm is claimed to be applied successfully in various studies, they are

108
A. Solati et al.
Fig. 5. Schematic illustration of the BP neural network structure.
more likely to achieve the local minima rather than the global minima
and subsequently the convergence is appreciably slow [41–43]. More-
over, the proper selection of both inertial and learning factors is a
crucial item in reaching to the convergence which is commonly per-
formed through experience or trial and error. Therefore, in the present
study GA was adopted to designate the unknown variables in ANN
modeling including: learning rates (η), number of hidden layer neurons
(Nh) and the momentum coefficient (β).
The input parameters namely: laser power, cutting speed and gas
pressure were fed into three-layer GA-ANN algorithm to predict the
output values which are HAZ and maximum bearing strength of the
laser drilled laminate. The number of neurons in input and output
layers is equal to the number of input and output variables, respectively
whereas the number of hidden layers is obtained through GA. The to-
pology of the neural network is shown in Fig. 5.
The tournament and roulette wheel method was adopted for se-
lecting the parent chromosomes which have higher likelihood. For
cross-over and mutation operators, one-point type and uniform type
were employed, respectively. Some combinations of different GA op-
tions such as selection and crossover operators, population size and
generation number were tested in order to achieve best results. The
main parameters of GA algorithm are highlighted in Table 6.
By selecting the best GA configuration, the mean square error and
mean absolute error are minimized and the best chromosome con-
taining the most appropriate ANN network parameters is opted out for
subsequent ANN modeling. The most important parameters for an ANN
including Nh, βh, βo, ηh and ηo where embedded in chromosomes (po-
pulation) as genes, therefore, 5 genes in the form of binary numbers
were considered for the each chromosome of the GA. The number of
hidden layers was limited between 1 and 10, the momentum and
learning rate was restricted between 0 and 1. The networks were gen-
erated and trained via training data and after obtaining the fitness
functions for the networks, they were evaluated on the basis of
minimum error. Among different transfer functions for output and
Table 6
Main parameters of GA algorithm used for optimizing ANN.
Parameter Designation
Population size Npop
Number of binary digits
Generation number Ngen
Number of iterations – 2000
Cross-over probability Pc
Mutation probability Pm
Fitness value for termination
Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115
Fig. 6. Flowchart of the proposed GA-ANN method [44,45].
hidden layers of the GA-ANN, the sigmoid function was employed. The
flowchart of the proposed scheme is depicted in Fig. 6.
Moreover, for comparison reasons, the ANN was trained through
trial-and-error method with varying the number of hidden layer neu-
rons. It has been found that the accuracy of a neural network is variable
in terms of some factors, namely: number of hidden layers, number of
training and testing runs, initial weights, and the type of activation
function. In trail-and-error procedure, the initial weight is ranged be-
tween −0.5 and 0.5. The data in Table 5 was randomly divided into
two parts: training set, and testing set (data in italic). Based on several
literature [46–48] it is recommended that 20% of the data set to be
utilized as the testing set for the ANN. The initial momentum coefficient
(β) for both hidden and output layers was 0.8 whereas the initial
learning rates (η) for hidden and output layers were 1 and 0.1, re-
spectively.
About number of neurons in hidden layers, different authors have
suggested different approaches to obtain the Nh for the best perfor-
mance of the ANN [49–56]. In the current paper, the number of hidden
layer neurons was altered using the equations proposed for calculating
the same in previous literature which is called trial-and-error method to
assess the model performance. Some researchers have proposed math-
ematical equations to approximate the optimum number of hidden
layer neurons such as Paola [56] who put forward following equations
for calculating the number of hidden layer neurons.
Value
2 + 0.5N0 (N02 + Ni ) + (N0 × Ni ) − 3
Nh =
100 Ni + N0 (3)
10
80
Nh = N0 × Ni (4)
0.95
In which N0 and Ni are the number of neurons in output and input
0.01
1 layers, respectively. Other values for the ANN modeling were selected
based on previous models proposed by Fu [57].
109
A. Solati et al.
Fig. 7. SEM micrograph of HAZ region with different process parameters (a) specimen No. 16 (b) specimen No. 9 (c) specimen No. 3 (d) specimen No. 19 and (d)
specimen No. 25.
5. Results and discussions
5.1. HAZ results
The width of HAZ has a significant contribution to the overall
quality of the laser drilling of GFRP materials since the fibers in HAZ
region are depleted from the resin leaving them as weak points against
mechanical loading. The HAZ induced by the laser drilling was mea-
sured using SEM images taken from the top surface of the laser drilled
hole and image analysis. The HAZ of the samples drilled with different
process parameters are shown in Fig. 7. The HAZ values varied between
0.291 and 0.636 mm. Generally, the specimens subjected to higher laser
power or lower cutting speed showed larger HAZ as depicted in main
effects plot (Fig. 8). The main effect plot shows the value of HAZ for
each factor level which is the average for 9 experimental conditions.
The glass fibers have higher vaporization point than the resin matrix
and as a result, a longer interaction time is required to remove the fi-
bers. This extra time causes the matrix to be adjacent to the laser spot
for a longer time than it regularly requires without the fiber re-
inforcements which in turn leads to higher HAZ. The gas pressure has
less effect on HAZ extension compared to other two parameters ac-
cording to Fig. 8. The analysis of variance was also carried out on the
results and the P-values for the gas pressure, cutting speed and laser
power were obtained 0.041, 0.001 and 0.000, respectively which con-
firms the previous sentence. However, a slight decrease is evident in the
HAZ value when the gas pressure is higher which can be explained by
ease of molten polymer ejection from the cutting zone. Care must be
taken for applying higher gas pressures since excessive gas pressure
may cause delamination damage to the laminate. The results of GA-
ANN prediction model are provided in Section 5.3.
Fig. 8. Main effects plot for the effect of process parameters on the HAZ.
110
Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115
5.2. Bearing strength results
After measuring the bearing strength for each specimen according to
Section 2.1, the results indicated that the bearing strength changes
between 141.34 MPa and 160.6 MPa. The load-displacement graphs of
a number of the specimens are provided in Fig. 9. The load displace-
ment curves for bearing response of laser drilled GFRP are similar to the
curves for mechanically-drilled laminates reported in the previous
studies [27,58,59]. The force is increased almost linearly at first until
the first crack is initiated in laminate which eventually leads to the first
peak in the stress and as the pin loading continues, the load encounters
ascending and descending several times due to the fracture of fibers,
thus, some other peaks are recorded until a sudden drop is observed in
the load. The maximum peak recorded during the bearing test was
considered as the bearing strength of the specimen.
It was noted that the bearing strength was higher in samples having
lower HAZ dimension. The bearing response of the laser drilled lami-
nates with different HAZ values were compared with that of mechani-
cally-drilled samples as illustrated in Fig. 10. The average bearing
strength for mechanically-drilled sample was 158.81 MPa and as ap-
parent from this figure, the optimum laser drilling condition can im-
prove the bearing strength of the sample compared to the traditional
drilling method.
The compressive stresses developed on the contact area of the hole
can cause bearing, tensile or shearing failures. Therefore, the width of
the sample was chosen high enough versus the hole diameter to limit
the failure mechanism to bearing failure only. The load displacement
curves corresponding to the laser drilled hole showed less variation in
replicating experiments for each experimental run compared to that of
the conventionally-drilled hole. This indicates that the laser drilling has
more repeatable results than mechanical drilling in terms of bearing
response. This could be justified by considering the force lines on
drilled holes after the pin loading which become denser causing higher
stress concentration effect [27,29]. In case of mechanical drilling, the
delamination prevents the force lines to be formed and as a result, the
bearing strength is lower and unsteady in mechanical drilling compared
to the holes made by optimum laser drilling parameters. In holes drilled
with optimum parameters which have smallest HAZ, nearly no dela-
mination is existent, thus, the force lines could be formed and therefore,
the bearing strength is higher and more steady. Although, Capello and
Tagliaferri [60] have reported that other types of machining damage
such as micro-cracks seem to have more contribution on the static and
dynamic bearing behavior than the delamination. By considering this
criterion, the higher bearing strength of the laser drilled holes can be
explained similarly. Accordingly, to the SEM image in Fig. 11, the
mechanically-drilled hole suffers from micro-cracks and interlaminar
cracks while no micro-cracks were observed in the optimum laser
drilled sample.
A regression model was developed based on the correlation between
the HAZ extent and the bearing strength as indicated in Eq. (5) with
coefficient of determination (R2) of 94.03% and adjusted R2 of 93.79%.
Based on this equation, it could be realized that the bearing strength of
A. Solati et al.
Fig. 9. Force-displacement curves of bearing test on the laser drilled samples.
Fig. 10. Comparison of bearing strength for laser drilled samples with different
HAZ values versus mechanically-drilled samples.
a laminate with ideally zero HAZ would be 173.83 MPa and every
millimeter increase in the HAZ would reduce the bearing strength by
47.19 MPa. In order to achieve higher bearing strength than the con-
ventional drilling, the HAZ value should be maintained to less than
0.318 mm.
BS = 173.83 − 47.19HAZ
Fig. 11 illustrates the SEM micrograph of the hole surface on the
contact area after pin loaded bearing test. In Fig. 11(a), which presents
the SEM micrograph of the typical laser drilled hole after bearing test, it
can be noted that the fibers in the contact zone are broken. When the
matrix is degraded due to extensive heat in the cutting zone, the fibers
lose their supporting matrix causing fiber extrusion. When the bearing
load is applied, the fibers in this region can not transfer the load to
other fibers, thus, the load would not be distributed uniformly on the
contact surface [14]. Therefore, some regions may be subject to higher
stresses which in turn reduce the overall bearing strength. Generally, it
Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115
was noted that as the length of the broken fibers increases, the bearing
strength of the sample is decreased since the length of the broken fiber
is an indication of the fiber extrusion and the fiber extrusion size is
proportional to the HAZ extent which in turn adversely affects the
bearing strength. Thus, morphological study of the laser drilled holes,
confirms the results presented in Fig. 10. The hole wall surface of the
laser drilled and mechanically-drilled samples are depicted in Fig. 11(b)
and (b) for morphological comparison. Interlaminar cracks due to
compressive loading during bearing test and fiber pull-out due to drill
bit thrust force joint with its peripheral action were more prevalent in
the mechanically-drilled samples. The interlaminar cracks were ob-
served specially at regions where the fiber orientation was normal to
the hole wall as demonstrated in Fig. 11(b). This finding was in
agreement with the investigation made by Kelly and Hallstrom [61].
Interlaminar cracks and delamination are of the main factors for
bearing strength decrement in FRP laminates [62,63]. Also, fiber pull-
out which usually happens in mechanical drilling of FRP laminates,
destroys the fiber-matrix bond, thus, the integrity of the part is reduced
and as a result, the bearing strength decreases [64,65]. No obvious
delamination was observed in the SEM micrographs of laser drilled
sample therefore it could be stated that the delamination does not have
a major contribution to the reduction of the bearing strength of the
laser drilled samples, contrary to that of the mechanically-drilled
samples.
(5)
5.3. GA-ANN model results
The proposed GA-ANN model was assessed using the statistical
analyses based on the adjusted parameters in the training stage of ANN
and the best number for hidden layers was found to be four. Thus, the
structure of the present ANN-GA network consists of three input layers,
four hidden layers and two output layers. The GA was implemented to
find the average and best fitness which is defined by mean square error
(MSE) for each generation. The lowest value of MSE was identified for
each network and the average fitness was calculated through averaging
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A. Solati et al. Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115

Fig. 11. SEM micrographs of the pin loaded fracture surface (a) laser drilled and (b) mechanical drilled sample.

them. Moreover, the overall minimum of MSE values among all net- depicted in Figs. 12 and 13 for HAZ and bearing strength, respectively.
works was defined as best fitness. The network resulting in the least The results of coefficient of determination for GA-ANN model of HAZ
MSE and its corresponding generation were obtained from the average which are R2 = 0.986 and R2 = 0.981 for training and testing dataset,
fitness plot. The minimum MSE and its regarding generation number respectively and GA-ANN model of bearing strength which are
were also extracted from the best fitness plot. The optimum network R2 = 0.964 and R2 = 0.962 for training and testing dataset, respec-
which leads to the lowest MSE could reach the fitness of 0.007 at tively revealed that this method can yield high accuracy in comparison
generation number 38. It is noteworthy that the GA could effectively to trial-and-error ANN. Obviously, the proposed GA-ANN model can
converge the fitness value to the global optimum. sufficiently predict the responses because the mean absolute error
The best configuration of the ANN was specified for the optimum (MAE) and mean square error (MSE) are very small and the coefficient
network as exhibited in Table 7. Furthermore, as previously stated, of determination (R2) is very close to 1.
several network configurations using trial-and-error method were de-
(Exp.meas. −pred. val. )
veloped and tested to assess and compare the precision of the model in Error = × 100
Exp.meas.
predicting the response variables. Different error functions were uti-
lized to train the network by minimization of the error for either GA- It should be noted that for the best performance of the network, the
ANN or trial-and-error approach. The MSE, MAE and R2 functions were MSE and MAE shall be as close as possible to zero and the R2 shall be as
implemented to examine the performance characteristics of the model close as possible to 1. These functions were calculated as follows:
according to Eqs. (6)–(8). Table 8 demonstrates the prediction perfor-
N
mance of the GA-ANN method for the test cases of HAZ and bearing 1
strength. For each of MSE, MAE and R2, the corresponding rating was
MSE =
N
∑ (yi - y′i)2
i=1 (6)
calculated by averaging each performance index for the predictive
models of HAZ and bearing strength. 1
N

Based on the values of performance indices (R2, MSE and MAE), a
simple ranking was performed according to the method proposed by
Zorlu et al. [66]. Based on their proposed method, the performance
indices were ordered and rated then, the ratings of R2 , MSE and MAE for
both training and testing datasets were added up to obtain the total
rank. The ranking for each model is calculated and presented in Table 8.
Then, six trial-and-error ANN models and one optimum GA-ANN model
were assessed using performance indices obtained in Table 8, and the
overall ranking of each model was calculated. As shown in Table 8, the
coefficient of determination (R2) was improved by about 5–34% com-
pared to the ANN with 9 and 5 hidden layer neurons, respectively for
predicting the HAZ and bearing strength. As it is noted in Table 9, the
GA-ANN model has the best performance among the other models
followed by the model with 9 hidden layers.
According to this table, the best ANN model for predicting the re-
sults was the model with 9 hidden layer neurons. The obtained pre-
diction results from the GA-ANN model versus the actual responses are
MAE =
N
∑ |yi - y′i|
i=1 (7)
N
∑i= 1 (yi − y′i )2
R2 = 1 − N
∑i= 1 (yi − ȳi)2 (8)
where yi is the measured experimental value, y'i is the predicted value,
ȳ is the averaged value of experimental data and N is the number of
experimental runs. The results prove that the GA-ANN approach leads
to lower error and higher linear correlation with experimental data
compared to the results obtained through trial-and-error method. The
GA-ANN can provide more accurate results than conventional ANN
with trial-and-error. Eventually, the accuracy of the prediction was
examined through comparing the predicted results and experimental
results for HAZ and bearing strength and the comparison results are
presented in Table 10. According to this table, since the error values are
very low compared to the conventional trial-and-error ANN method,
this approach can be employed to reach more accurate predictions on

Table 7
Optimum configuration of the ANN obtained from GA.
Number of generations Learning rate for hidden Learning rate for output Number of hidden layer Momentum coefficient for Momentum coefficient for output
layer (ηh) layer (ηo) neurons (Nh) hidden layer (βh) layer (βo)

38 0.294 0.271 4 0.765 0.692

112
A. Solati et al. Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115

Table 8
Prediction performance of the proposed GA-ANN method versus the trial-and-error method.
Model Nh Predicted HAZ Predicted BS Rating for MSE Rating for MAE Rating for R2 Rank

2 2
MSE MAE R MSE MAE R

Trial-and-error ANN 2 Tr 0.951 1.619 0.752 0.974 1.832 0.726 7 6 6 19

TS 0.948 1.687 0.749 0.97 1.901 0.724 7 6 6 19
3 Tr 0.015 1.355 0.805 0.036 1.57 0.782 3 3 5 11
TS 0.023 1.364 0.802 0.046 1.58 0.776 4 3 5 12
5 Tr 0.042 1.824 0.734 0.064 2.041 0.709 6 7 7 20
TS 0.045 1.802 0.725 0.066 2.02 0.702 6 7 7 20
6 Tr 0.035 1.537 0.817 0.058 1.75 0.791 5 5 4 14
TS 0.036 1.655 0.814 0.06 1.869 0.789 5 5 4 14
7 Tr 0.012 1.402 0.896 0.033 1.617 0.873 2 4 3 9
TS 0.014 1.393 0.899 0.037 1.609 0.873 2 4 3 9
9 Tr 0.019 1.222 0.939 0.041 1.439 0.914 4 2 2 8
TS 0.02 1.216 0.941 0.046 1.434 0.916 3 2 2 7
GA-ANN 4 Tr 0.007 1.021 0.986 0.009 1.045 0.964 1 1 1 3
TS 0.008 1.037 0.981 0.011 1.058 0.962 1 1 1 3

Tr: Training, TS: Test.

Table 9
Values of total rank for ANN and GA-ANN.
Method Number of hidden layer neurons (Nh) Total rank

Trial-and-error ANN 2 38
3 23
5 40
6 28
7 18
9 15
GA-ANN 4 6

Fig. 13. Measured versus predicted values for bearing strength from GA-ANN
model and the pertaining coefficient of determination (a) training dataset (b)
test dataset.

HAZ and bearing strength in laser drilling of GFRP composites.

6. Conclusion

The CO2 laser drilling of glass/epoxy laminates was studied in this

Fig. 12. Measured versus predicted values of HAZ from GA-ANN model and the
pertaining coefficient of determination (a) training dataset (b) test dataset.
paper to obtain an accurate prediction on the HAZ and bearing strength
based on main process parameters by means of a novel hybrid GA-ANN
methodology. The conventional ANN network was optimized through
GA algorithm to attain optimum characteristics of the back-propagation
ANN including: the number of hidden layer neurons, learning rates and
momentum to overcome the intrinsic drawbacks of ANN. The results

113
A. Solati et al. Optics and Laser Technology 113 (2019) 104–115

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