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Electron beam butt welding of stainless steel (SS 304) and electrolytically tough pitched (ETP) copper plates was carried out according to central composite design of experiments. Three input parameters, namely accelerating voltage, beam current and weld speed were considered in the butt welding experiments of dissimilar metals. The weld-bead parameters, such as bead width and depth of penetration, and weld strength in terms of yield strength and ultimate tensile strength were measured as the responses of the process. Input-output relationships were established in the forward direction using regression analysis, back-propagation neural network (BPNN), genetic algorithm-tuned neural network (GANN) and particle swarm optimization algorithm-tuned neural network (PSONN). Reverse mapping of this process was also conducted using the BPNN, GANN and PSONN approaches, although the same could not be done from the obtained regression equations. Neural networks were found to tackle the problems of both forward and reverse mappings efficiently. However, neural networks tuned by the genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm were seen to perform better than the BPNN in most of the cases but not all.

USB was designed to standardize the connection of computer peripherals (including keyboards, pointing devices, digital cameras, printers, portable media players, disk drives and network adapters) to personal computers, both to communicate and to supply electric power. It has become commonplace on other devices, such as smartphones, PDAs and video game consoles. USB has effectively replaced a variety of earlier interfaces, such as parallel ports, as well as separate power chargers for portable devices. Since USB is hot pluggable, the connectors would be used more frequently. In this context, its reliability and life span is vital. Generally, an exhaustive series of circular insertion/extraction testing can be carried out to evaluate the USB life span. However, this method is time consuming and costly. This paper proposes a novel testing method based on BPNN for USB connector life span, which can estimate the useful life by predicting the residual life of the connector. This method allows the entire test process to stop before the specimen fails, and predicts the specimen’s life in advance based on pre-test data. Modeling process is described in detail in this paper and the test results show that the model can realize accurate prediction within a certain range.