An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach for the prediction of hardness in Ni-Diamond Composite Coatings

Nickel-diamond composite coatings are produced by electro deposition using sedimentation techniques at various cathode current densities, pH and temperatures. Electro deposition was carried out from a conventional Watts bath. Natural diamond powder of 6–12 μm size was used in this study. The hardness values of composite coated specimens were measured using Vickers micro hardness testing machine. An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model was developed using 27 sample data obtained by designing an experiment with three levels of experiment namely Low, Medium and High to predict the hardness value of Ni-diamond metal matrix. Within the range of input variables for the present case (pH = 2.5 to 4.5; current density (i) = 1 to 3 A/dm2; temperature = 30 to 60°C), Artificial Neural Network comes ahead in nearness of the predictions to the experimental values of hardness as the average errors in case of ANN is 0.0775%.