Real-Time Monitoring of the Weld Penetration State in Laser Welding of High-Strength Steels by Airborne Acoustic Signal

Nowadays high-strength steels have great applications in different industries due to their good combination of formability, weldability, and high strength-to-weight ratio. To guarantee a high quality without the presence of defects such as partial penetration (PP) in the laser welding of high-strength steels, it is very important to on-line monitor the whole welding process. While optical sensors are widely applied to monitor the laser welding process, we are proposing to use a microphone to acquire the airborne acoustic signals produced during laser welding of high-strength steel DP980. In order to extract valuable information from a very noisy signal acquired in a harsh environment such as industrial welding, spectral subtraction (SS), a noise reduction method is used to process the acquired airborne sound signals. Furthermore, by applying the power spectrum density (PSD) estimation method, the frequency characteristics of the acoustic signals are analyzed as well. The results indicate that the welds in full penetration (FP) and PP produce different signatures of acoustic signals that are characterized with different sound pressure levels and frequency distributions ranging from 500 Hz to 1500 Hz. Based on these differences, two algorithms are developed to distinguish the FP from PP during the laser welding process. A real-time monitoring system is implemented by a LabVIEW-based graphic program developed in this research. A feedback control system that could guarantee the FP will be developed in the near future.

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Noise Reduction During Acoustic Monitoring of Laser Welding of High-Strength Steels

ASME 2009 International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference, Volume 1 ◽

10.1115/msec2009-84080 ◽

2009 ◽

Author(s):

Wei Huang ◽

Radovan Kovacevic

Keyword(s):

Laser Welding ◽

Noise Reduction ◽

Acoustic Signal ◽

Welding Process ◽

High Strength Steels ◽

High Strength ◽

Weld Penetration ◽

Acoustic Signatures ◽

Reduction Methods ◽

Laser Welding Process

During the laser welding process of high-strength steels, different defects, such as a partial weld penetration, spatters, and blow-through holes could be present. In order to detect the presence of defects and achieve a quality control, acoustic monitoring based on microphones is applied to the welding process. As an effective sensor to monitor the laser welding process, however, the microphone is greatly limited by intensive noise existing in the complex industrial environment. In this paper, in order to acquire a clean acoustic signal from the laser welding process, two noise reduction methods are proposed: one is the spectral subtraction method based on one microphone and the other one is the beamforming based on a microphone array. By applying these two noise reduction methods, the quality of the acoustic signal is enhanced, and the acoustic signatures are extracted both in the time domain and frequency domain. The analysis results show that the extracted acoustic signatures can well indicate the different weld penetration states and they can also be used to study the internal mechanisms of the laser-material interaction.

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