A study on the multi-response optimisation of EDM processes

Determination of the parametric settings that can simultaneously optimise multiple responses of electric discharge machining (EDM) process is an important issue to the engineers. Researchers have usually preferred to apply grey relational analysis (GRA)-based approaches for optimising the multiple responses of EDM process. The advantage of GRA-based approaches is that they are easily comprehendible and computationally simple. Literature survey reveals that there are few other simple methods for multi-response optimisation which can be easily implemented using EXCEL worksheet. The aim of this paper is to explore whether any of these methods can give better optimisation performance than the commonly used GRA-based approaches. In this paper, two sets of past experimental data on EDM processes are analysed using four different methods and their relative performances are then compared. The results show that weighted signal-to-noise ratio (WSN) and utility theory methods give better overall optimisation performance than GRA-based and other approaches.