This study investigates the application of a coupled multi-layer perceptrons (MLP) model with Archimedes optimizer (AO) to predict characteristics of dissimilar lap joints made of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and polycarbonate (PC). The joints were welded using the laser transmission welding (LTW) technique equipped with a beam wobbling feature. The inputs of the models were laser power, welding speed, pulse frequency, wobble frequency, and wobble width; whereas, the outputs were seam width and shear strength of the joint. The Archimedes optimizer was employed to obtain the optimal internal parameters of the multi-layer perceptrons. In addition to the Archimedes optimizer, the conventional gradient descent technique, as well as the particle swarm optimizer (PSO), was employed as internal optimizers of the multi-layer perceptrons model. The prediction accuracy of the three models was compared using different error measures. The AO-MLP outperformed the other two models. The computed root mean square errors of the MLP, PSO-MLP, and AO-MLP models are (39.798, 19.909, and 2.283) and (0.153, 0.084, and 0.0321) for shear strength and seam width, respectively.
Keywords: Archimedes optimizer; artificial intelligence; laser welding; multi-layer perceptrons; polymeric lap joints.