Prediction of grain size of nanocrystalline nickel coatings using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system

This paper presents application of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for prediction of the grain size of nanocrystalline nickel coatings as a function of current density, saccharin concentration and bath temperature. For developing ANFIS model, the current density, saccharin concentration and bath temperature are taken as input, and the resulting grain size of the nanocrystalline coating as the output of the model. In order to provide a consistent set of experimental data, the nanocrystalline nickel coatings have been deposited from Watts-type bath using direct current electroplating within a large range of process parameters i.e., current density, saccharin concentration and bath temperature. Variation of the grain size because of the electroplating parameters has been modeled using ANFIS, and the experimental results and theoretical approaches have been compared to each other as well. Also, we have compared the proposed ANFIS model with artificial neural network (ANN) approach. The results have shown that the ANFIS model is more accurate and reliable compared to the ANN approach.