Abstract
Nondestructive techniques for appraising gas metal arc welding(GMAW) faults plays a very important role in on-line quality controllability and prediction of the GMAW process. On-line welding quality controllability and prediction have several disadvantages such as high cost, low efficiency, complication and greatly being affected by the environment. An enhanced, efficient evaluation technique for evaluating welding faults based on Mahalanobis distance(MD) and normal distribution is presented. In addition, a new piece of equipment, designated the weld quality tester(WQT), is developed based on the proposed evaluation technique. MD is superior to other multidimensional distances such as Euclidean distance because the covariance matrix used for calculating MD takes into account correlations in the data and scaling. The values of MD obtained from welding current and arc voltage are assumed to follow a normal distribution. The normal distribution has two parameters: the mean µ and standard deviation σ of the data. In the proposed evaluation technique used by the WQT, values of MD located in the range from zero to µ+3σ are regarded as “good”. Two experiments which involve changing the flow of shielding gas and smearing paint on the surface of the substrate are conducted in order to verify the sensitivity of the proposed evaluation technique and the feasibility of using WQT. The experimental results demonstrate the usefulness of the WQT for evaluating welding quality. The proposed technique can be applied to implement the on-line welding quality controllability and prediction, which is of great importance to design some novel equipment for weld quality detection.
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Supported by Ningbo Municipal Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2014A610063)
FENG Shengqiang, born in 1979, is currently an associate research fellow at Ningbo Branch of China Academy of Ordnance Science, China. He received his PhD degree from Tianjin University, China, in 2010. His research interests include Welding, Coatings and Surface Treatments.
TERASAKI Hidenri, born in 1974, is currently an associate professor at Joining and Welding Research Institute, Osaka University, Japan. His research interests include Materials Processing Engineering.
KOMIZO Yuichi, born in 1950, is currently a professor at Joining and Welding Research Institute, Osaka University, Japan. His research interests include Materials Processing Engineering.
HU Shengsun, born in 1955, is currently a professor at Tianjin Key Laboratory of Advanced Joining Technology, Tianjin University, China. His research interests include Welding Automation.
CHEN Donggao, born in 1970, is currently a research fellow at Ningbo Branch of China Academy of Ordnance Science, China. His research interests include Welding Technology and Welding materials.
MA Zhihua, born in 1982, is currently an engineer at Ningbo Branch of China Academy of Ordnance Science, China. His research interests include Welding Technology and Welding materials.
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Feng, S., Terasaki, H., Komizo, Y. et al. Development of evaluation technique of GMAW welding quality based on statistical analysis. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. 27, 1257–1263 (2014). https://doi.org/10.3901/CJME.2014.0718.120
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3901/CJME.2014.0718.120