CLASSIFICATION OF ALLOYS WITH AN ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK AND MULTIVARIATE CALIBRATION OF GLOW-DISCHARGE EMISSION-SPECTRA

Artificial neural networks were constructed for the classification of metal alloys based on their elemental constituents. Glow discharge-atomic emission spectra obtained with a photodiode array spectrometer were used in multivariate calibrations for 7 elements in 37 Ni-based alloys (different types) and 15 Fe-based alloys. Subsets of the two major classes formed calibration sets for stepwise multiple linear regression. The remaining samples were used to validate the calibration models. Reference data from the calibration sets were then pooled into a single set to train neural networks with different architectures and different training parameters. After the neural networks learned to discriminate correctly among alloy classes in the training set, their ability to clasify samples in the testing set was measured. In general, the neural network approach performed slightly better than the K-nearest neighbor method, but it suffered from a hidden classification mechanism and nonunique solutions. The neural network methodology is discussed and compared with conventional sample-classification techniques, and multivariate calibration of glow discharge spectra is compared with conventional univariate calibration.