"Design and Development of a Fuzzy Logic Controller for Prediction of Outer Surface Finish of Flow Formed Component"

Fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is well suited where there is a considerable amount of uncertainty in the process. Flow forming is an incremental forming process widely used used to reduce thickness of the tubes. Compared to machining it improves the strength. It is extensively used for manufacturing of components used for aerospace and automobile applications. The surface finish depends on stagger and the feed rate and their combined effect on the surface finish of the tube formed by flow forming process. The uncertainty arises due variation of these parameters . Hence in the present work a Fuzzy logic controller is developed to predict the surface finish with variation of stagger and feed rate and validated. The experiments are carried out on SAE 4130 Steel using L4 orthogonal array. To deal . To minimise the no. of experiments in designing data base an L-4 orthogonal array is chosen for experimentation. Flow forming is carried out and and data base with 4 rules are formulated. Triangular membership function is selected for the input and out variables and FLC is designed. The FLC is validated with 5 more experiments. Mamdani approach is used to develop the Fuzzy controller.