| Welding is a key component of the automotive industry, and the quality of spot welds becomes more critical as demands for cost reduction and vehicle strength increase. The difficulty with traditional weld quality monitoring is that it is an off-line destructive testing process based upon sampling. This is both time consuming and incomplete in the sense that it does not test all welds. The solution, therefore is to develop a system in which all spot welds can be tested on-line. In this Doctoral research program, conducted by Andrew Dennison, as part of his postgraduate studies, the spot welding process at Ford Motor Company was evaluated and an on-line method of assessing weld quality was developed. The approach centred upon the measurement of the acoustic emissions arising from the traditional spot welding process. The monitoring of acoustic emissions, combined with the direct monitoring of other weld parameters led to a system which could characterise the quality of welds on-line. Collaborators: Ford Motor Company of Australia |
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Doctortee.net
| Analysis of Acoustic Emissions Signatures During Welding |