A Machine Learning-based Approach to Predicting Tensile Strength of 6061-T6 Aluminum Alloy Friction Stir Welded Joints
摘要
This study compiled experimental data from the public literature and employed six machine learning algorithms to predict and compare the tensile strength of 6061-T6 aluminum alloy friction-stir-welded joints under various process parameters. The models evaluated include eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Regression (SVR), k-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT), and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP). Feature selection was optimized using the Pearson correlation coefficient and dimensionality reduction techniques, reducing the number of input features from seven to five. Furthermore, SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) were employed to interpret the relationships between disparate features and the tensile strength of the welded joints. The prediction results show that the RFE + XGBoost model achieved a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 2.98%, a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.973, a mean absolute error (MSE) of 45.31, and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 5.25, indicating its effectiveness in predicting the mechanical properties of 6061-T6 aluminum alloy welded joints. Further analyses showed that the features affecting the performance of welded joints were ranked in the following order of importance: welding speed (24.84), rotational speed (10.86), plate thickness (7.93), stirring needle length (7.55), and stirring needle shoulder shaft diameter (5.48).