MONITORING OF WELDING PROCESSES

Submitted for the fulfillment of requirementsfor the award of Bachelor of Technology from IIT Guwahati

Under the supervision of Dr. SUKHOMAY PAL

Submitted by: Hemant Verma Marmeek Kosambia

Department of Mechanical Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Guwahati 781039, Assam, INDIA

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the work presented in the report entitled Monitoring of Weld Quality during Welding by Marmeek Kosambia (09010332) and Hemant Verma (09010321), represents an original work under the guidance of Dr. Sukhomay Pal, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Guwahati. This study has not been submitted elsewhere for a degree.

Signature of student:

Date: Place:

Hemant Verma

Date: Place:

Marmeek Kosambia

Signature of supervisor

Date: Place:

Dr. S.Pal

Signature of HOD

Date: Place:

Head Department of Mechanical Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project has relied on the advice, vision, energy and collaboration of all the experts and my well wishers. On the pillars of such collegiality is a better academia constructed. We, hereby take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the people who have been instrumental in the successful completion of this phase of the project.

We earnestly thank my project supervisor Dr. Sukhomay Pal and Dr. Chandramohan Somayaji for their continuous and thorough guidance which led and motivated us to somehow complete the work. It is due to thier efforts that enabled me to reap the rich harvest of knowledge.

We are also very grateful to Mr. Das, Incharge Workshop and Mr. Chetri for their cooperation and helping us on the technical side. Their confidence and faith in me helped me to gear up in all the crests and troughs like situations during the project. We also heartily thank my all other associates who helped me in some or the other way.

We are thankful to Vishwajit Parida, for helping us in the critical times and lending a helping hand at all stages. The immense support received from my parents was vital for this project. They have held my hand in all the situations of my life imbibing in me all the moral and spiritual qualities.

We are thankful to all my classmates and the department staff for their direct and indirect support.

Hemant Verma Marmeek Kosambia

CONTENTS
Abstract.....2 Literature review....3 Submerged arc welding process (SAW)...4 Introduction....5 Experimental setup..6 Procedure..11 Observations...22 Conclusion....23 Future work........24

ABSTRACT
An experienced welder can judge the weld quality by hearing the welding sound, but these judging may vary or uncertain, but this channel was never explored or used in industrial purposes. So if we can somehow develop some parameter or define some characteristics of sound/acoustic signals for weld quality we can save a lot of testing/inspection time of every product. Just by installing a sound recorder with the welding machine we can predetermine the points of low strength or defects. The goal of this project is to develop methods which characterize the arc-acoustic signal such that a relationship can be drawn between weld quality, welding parameters (Current and Voltage) and acoustic spectral characteristics. To study the correlations, experiments were held in which actual SAW was performed on a number of test samples and the acoustic signals, voltage and current were recorded, filtered and observations are made. Together, these investigations revealed strong correlation between welding voltage, welding current and arc-acoustics. The experiments held confirm the suspicion of welder reliance on arc-acoustic signals.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Ladislav Grad, Janez Grum, Ivan Polajnar and Janez Marko Slabe conducted experiments on GMAW. In this experiment measurements of acoustic waves generated during GMAW process were performed. Acoustic waves were measured in the surrounding air and in the parts being welded by employing a microphone and PZT sensor. To evaluate influences on sound generation extensive experiments were performed with two different unalloyed carbon steels: DIN RSt13 with 0.1% C and DIN Ck45 with 0.46% C, using two types of shielding gas: CO2 and gas mixture by its brand name Crystal (90% Ar, 10% CO2) and welding on a slope to vary the distance between welding nozzle and welding part. Acoustic signals were processed to obtain time domain and frequency domain descriptors. Some relationships between descriptors and the weld process characteristics were investigated. Results indicated that the arc sound exhibits distinct characteristics for each welding situation and that the main source of acoustic waves in short circuit metal transfer mode is arc reignition. From acoustic signals one can easily assess process stability and detect welding conditions resulting in weld defects. Joseph Tam in his thesis developed methods which characterize the arc-acoustic signal such that arelationship can be drawn between welding parameters and acoustic spectral characteristics. Threemethods were attempted including: Taguchi experiments to reveal trends between weld processparameters and the acoustic signal; psycho-acoustic experiments that investigate expert welderreliance on arc-sounds, and implementation of an artificial neural network (ANN) for mapping arc-acousticspectral characteristics to process parameters. Together, these investigations revealed strong correlation between welding voltage and arc-acoustics. The psycho-acoustic experiments confirm the suspicion of welder reliance on arc-acoustics as well as potential spectral candidates necessary to spray-transfer control during GMA welding. ANN performance shows promise in the approach and confirmation of the ANNs ability to learn. Further experimentation and data gathering to enrich the learning data-base will be necessary to apply artificial intelligence such as artificial neural networks to such a stochastic and non-linear relationship between arc-sound and GMA parameters. E. HuancaCayo, S.C. Absi Alfaro described the sound produced by the electric arc is a consequence of the amplitude modulation in the current by the arc voltage. The voltage and current in the GMAW process are stochastic nature. This implicates that the sound produced by the electric arc have also a stochastic nature. The behaviour of voltage and current has a direct relationship with the behaviour of stability of the metallic transfer. The experiments are divided in two groups; the first group consists in welds without disturbances presence on the plate. The second group consist in weld with disturbances presence on the plate. The disturbance induced is generated placing grease in the weld trajectory; this area is called as interference region. During the pass of the weld for the interference region, it is produced instabilities in the arc ignitions originating dramatic changes in the metallic transfer cycles and as consequence they were originated structural discontinuities in the bead. In all weld experiments were acquired acoustic pressure signal generated by the electric arc. For it was used the virtual instrumentation software

LabVIEW 8.2 and the data acquisition card PCI Eagle 703S.After this comparative study they concluded that the acoustical evaluation of the stability on the GMAW process presents more clarity for the analysis based in the time domain that the frequency domain. M. UDINA, J. PREZELJ, I. POLAJNAR conducted an experimental analyses of the acoustic signals that shows that there are two main noise-generating mechanisms, first having impulse form is arc extinction and arc ignition; the second is the arc itself acting as an ionization sound source. The sound signal is used for assessing and monitoring of the welding process, and for prediction of welding process stability and quality. A new algorithm based on the measured welding current was established for the calculation of emitted sound during the welding process. D. F. Farson and K. R. Kim formulated an analytical model of optical and acoustic emission generation by laser welds. A simplified model of the visible portion of the laser weld plume is used as a basis for the prediction of optical and acoustic signals. The optical emission is calculated from the strongest helium and iron lines in the visible spectrum. The sound pressure is calculated as a function of vapor flow rate by considering the displacement of ambient air by vapor emanating from the keyhole. The model reveals that generation of visible light increases roughly in proportion to the flow rate of vapor from the plume. However, the acoustic signal is predicted to vary as the time derivative of the flow rate. Experimental measurements of visible light are found to be of the same magnitude as predicted by the model and the fluctuation of the optical and acoustic signals are found to be consistent with the hypothesis that they are both fundamentally due to vapor flow rate variations. CAYO, E.H. and ABSI ALFARO, S.C. stated that in the GMAW weld process, among others technical characteristics, a bigger deposition, facilitate the control improving significantly the production and the weld quality with relation to the traditional processes. In the present work a welding cell was used with open loop control. This allows the selection of electric input and output parameters (current, voltage, wire speed, welds speed, bead geometry and others). The present work has the objective to determine quantitatively the acoustic behaviour in the audible bands (20 Hz the 20 kHz) which is characteristic in each transfer mode. Then it will obtain an aero - acoustic model that relates acoustic behaviour to the weld quality. Morris et al. conducted an experiment for real-time analysis of weld quality in an arc welding process. The system includes a transducer which receives acoustic signals generated during the welding process. The acoustic signals are then samples and digitized. A signal processor calculates the root mean square and peak amplitudes of the digitized signals and transforms the digitized signal into a frequency domain signal. A data processor divides the frequency domain signal into a plurality of frequency bands and calculates the average power of each band. The average power values are input to an artificial neural network for analysis of weld quality. Arc current and/or voltage signals may be input to the A/D converter alone or in combination with the acoustic signal data for subsequent signal processing and neural network analysis.

SUBMERGED ARC WELDING PROCESS (SAW)

Definition: It is an arc welding process where in coalescence is produced by heating with an electric arc or arcs setup between a bare metal electrodes /electrode and job. The arc end of the electrode and the molten pool remain completely hidden and are invisibles being submerged under a blanket of granule material. The continuously fed bare electrodes melt and acts filler rod. No pressure is applied for welding purpose. Principle of operation: In submerged arc welding process, the end of a bare wire electrode is inserted in to a mound of flux that covers the area or joint to be welded. An arc is initiated, causing the base metal; electrode and flux in the immediate vicinity to melt the electrode advanced in the direction of the welding and mechanically fed in to the arc while flux is the joint. At same time the melted flux floats at the surface to form a protective slag cover. UN fused is reclaimed for refuse by a suction system. Usually the flux is so selected its co-efficient of thermal expansion is smaller than that of the filler metal. Hence as the weld joint cools, the flux coating automatically comes of the weld seam. Reclaimed unused flux is sent back to heaters where they are heated to make moisture and hydrogen content out of them. During welding the liquid flux may conduct some electric current between wire and base metal, but an electric arc is the predominant heat source. The flux blanket on the top surface of the weld poll prevents atmospheric gases from contamination the weld metal, and dissolves impurities in the base metal and the electrode and floats them to the surface. The flux can also add or remove certain alloying elements to or from the weld metal. The Automatic Welding: It is done equipment that performs the welding operation without requiring a welding operator to continuously monitor and adjust the controls. It is suitable for high production rate.

Machine Welding: arc length is kept constant by using the principle of a self adjusting arc i.e. if due to certain reasons arc length is decreased, arc voltage will decrease, arc current and, therefore, burn off rate will increase thereby causing, the arc to lengthen. Backing plate of steel or copper may be to control penetration support large amounts of molten metal associated with the process. Factors that determine whether to use SAW or not, include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The chemical composition and mechanical properties required of the final deposit. Thickness of the base metal to be welded Joint accessibility. Position in which the weld is to make. Frequency or volume of welding is to be performed.

Semiautomatic Welding: This process is done with a hand-held welding gun. The method features manual guidance using relatively small diameter electrode and travel speeds. Travel may be manual or driven by a small gun mounted on a driving motor. It employs equipment that performs the complete welding operation. However it must be monitored by a welding operator to position the work, start or stop welding, adjust the controls and set the speed of each weld. EQUIOMENT: The various equipment used for SAWis as follows: 1. Power supply 2. Electrode delivery system 3. Flux distribution system 4. Travel arrangement 5. Process control system WELD HEADS AND TORCHES: SAW head comprises of the wire feed monitor and roll assembly, the torch assembly and accessories for mounting a positioning the head. A flux is mounted on the weld head to deposit the flux either ahead of or concentric with the welding wire. The torch assembly guides the contact tip to weld zone and also delivers welding power to the contact tip. ACCESSORY EQIPMENT: 1. Travel equipment:Weld head travel in SAW generally provided by tractor type carriage, a side beam carriage or a manipulator. A tractor type carriage provides travel along straight or gently curved weld joints by riding on the tract set up along the joint or riding on the work piece it self. Side beam carriages provide linear travel only. Because side beam are generally fixed and work piece must be brought to the weld station, their greatest is shop welding. Manipulators are similar to side beam in that they are fixed and work piece must be brought to the welder. Manipulator are more versatile than beam they are capable of linear motion in there axes.

2.

Flux Recovery Units:These units may do any combination of the following: Remove infused flux and fused slag behind the weld head Screen out fused slag and other oversized material Remove magnetic particles. Remove fines. Recalculates back to hopper for reuse Heat flux in a hopper to keep in dry.

3. Positioners and fixtures:Because is limited to flat position welding, positioners and related equipment find spread use. Commonly used positioners include: Head tailstock units, turning rolls or both, to rotate cylindrical parts under the weld head. Tilting rotating positioners to bring the area to be welded on irregular parts into the flat position. FUNCTIONS OF FLUX: Stabilize arc Prevent contamination of weld metal Cleans the weld from unwanted impurities Generates inert gas shielding while metal transfer Forms slag to cover the weld Allows deposited metal to cool slowly Introduce allying element to the weld Decrease spatter Helps in uniform and even bead formation CLASSIFICATION OF SAW CONSUMABLE F6A7 F Indicates Flux 6 60,000 Psi or 414 Mpa tensile strength A For as welded 7 (-70* F)

F X1 X2 X3
F Indicates Flux X1 Min. Tensile Strength (Increments of 10,000 PSI or 69 M Pa) X2 Designates condition of heat treatment in which tests were conducted A For as welded P For as PWHT X3 Lowest Temperature at which impact test of weld metal meets or exceeds 20 ft-lb (27J)

INTRODUCTION
Recent developments in material joining, specifically arc-welding, have increased in scope and extended into the aerospace, nuclear, and underwater industries where complex geometry and hazardous environments necessitate fully automated systems. Even traditional applications of arc welding such as off-highway and automotive manufacturing have increased their demand in quality, accuracy, and volume to stay competitive. These requirements often exceed both skill and endurance capacities of human welders. As a result, improvements in process parameter feedback and sensing are necessary to successfully achieve a closed-loop control of such processes. One such feedback parameter in submerged arc welding (SAW) is acoustic emissions. Although there have been relatively few studies performed in this area, it is agreed amongst professional welders that the sound from an arc is critical to their ability to control the process. Three levels of on-line quality control have beenarticulated by the industry. In the first level one shouldbe able to automatically on-line detect production ofbad welds. In the second level one should be able to determine type of fault and reasons for faulty weld productionlike changes in welding process induced by disturbancesin flux flow, changes in wire feedrate and welding geometry, etc. In the third level oneshould be able to correct welding parameters during the welding process to assure proper weld quality. The lack of reliable non-contact, non-destructive, onlinesensors with the ability to detect defects as they form and with the capacity to operate at high temperaturesand in harsh environments is a considerableobstacle. This project presents a data acquisition systemfor monitoring a Submerged Arc Welding (SAW) process based on arc acoustics. The acoustic signal produced by the SAWcontains information about the behavior of the arccolumn, the molten pool and bead quality. Takinginto account that today industry has high demands onthe welding process reliability and controllability andthat much effort is used to on-line predict and controlthe quality of welds, it is surprisingly only a few publishedstudies in which acoustic waves are regarded as asource of information for process monitoring. To bridge some ofthe existing gap in scientific knowledge and industrialneed, measurementsof acoustic signals during SAWprocesshave been performed to find correlation in the bead quality, current and voltage during the weld. SAW process was chosendue to its widespread use in automatic weldingsystems.

EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
Experimental set-up is shown in Figure_. Standard industrial welding equipment was used in the experiments. As power supply an Iskra E-450 with constant static voltage characteristics was used. Consumable wire of Stainless Steel is used as electrode with granular fusible flux consisting of lime, silica, manganese oxide, calcium fluoride, and other compounds.The base plates used as the specimen in the experiment were mild steel plate of thickness of about 6mm. The data acquired during the experiment were the acoustic signals, voltage and current. A microphone was fixed to the welding head on a distance of 0.35 m from the arc in order to maintain constant distance from the welding process. This distance is approximately equal to the distance of the welders head from the arc, which means that the measured signal of noise can also be used for assessing the effect of welding noise on the welder. The signals from the microphone were captured using MATLAB. The most important task was to remove the noise from these signals. They were filter using the pre-defined filters of MATLAB i.e. a high pass filter and consequently buttered to get the desired output. The code to do is as follows: Matlab Code: Syntax recorder = audiorecorder recorder = audiorecorder(Fs,nBits,nChannels) recorder = audiorecorder(Fs,nBits,nChannels,ID) Description recorder = audiorecorder creates an 8000 Hz, 8-bit, 1-channel audiorecorder object. recorder = audiorecorder(Fs,nBits,nChannels) sets the sample rate Fs (in Hz), the sample size nBits, and the number of channels nChannels. recorder = audiorecorder(Fs,nBits,nChannels,ID) sets the audio input device to the device specified by ID. % Record your voice for 5 seconds. recObj = audiorecorder; disp('Start speaking.') recordblocking(recObj, 5); disp('End of Recording.');

% Store data in double-precision array. myRecording = getaudiodata(recObj); % Filtering data using a butterwort filter function fNorm = 2000 / (8000/2); [b,a] = butter(10, fNorm, 'high'); filtereddata = filtfilt(b, a, myRecording);

Description butter designs lowpass, bandpass, highpass, and bandstop digital and analog Butterworth filters. Butterworth filters are characterized by a magnitude response that is maximally flat in the passband and monotonic overall. % To plot both the graphs filtered and non-filtered on single scale subplot (211), plot(myRecording);subplot (212), plot (filtereddata);

A Tong tester and voltmeter was used for data acquisition. The output from these devices was in the form of voltage difference. The Data Acquisition Toolbox of National Instruments was used to get accurate observations of current and voltage. LAB VIEW Signal express 2011 was correspondingly used to receive the signals from the Data Acquisition Toolbox (NIDAQ). Filtering of the current and voltage signals was done on the Lab View itself.

PROCEDURE
1. Cut the plates for the specimen to be welded. 2. Clean the plates with emery paper and mild grinding. 3. Setup the SAW welding machine. Switch on the current and make other arrangements. 4. Placed the mic on the SAW Trolley such that it is at a distance of about 30-40cms from the weld 5. Attached the voltmeter and current recording devices 6. Setup the laptop with both the softwares ie. Matlab and labview running. 7. Measured the Stick out length with vernier caliper 8. Set the feed rate and trolley speed and creep feed rate 9. The welding was started and the readings from the input devices were recorded and observations were also noted. 10. After the weld was done, the test plate was kept to cool using tongs. 11. Later the slag was removed by slight hammering and emery paper and the plate was numbered according to the experiment number. 12. In the end the flux was collected and reused for next experiments. 13. Made the first set of experiments with the parameter from a WPS already being used in industry. 14. After the first set of experiments, the parameters of for a good bead were determined. 15. 5 more experiments were performed with varying the feed rate and in the last one a deliberate attempt was made to incur weld defect. 16. Now a different creep feed was used and 5 more experiments were performed with varying the feed rate and in the last one a deliberate attempt was made to incur weld defect. 17. In the very last run a change in speed was introduced during the weld and readings were recorded.

OSERVATIONS

CONCLUSION
All manual welders use the welding arc sound as a criterion to exhibit the stability of arc welding process. By employing sound in the control of the welding process small changes in the process can be detected. Nevertheless, according to our knowledge, acoustic waves have not been used to monitor the welding process in an industrial environment. To better understand this paradox, extensive experiments were performed by measuring acoustic waves in the surrounding air and in the parts being welded by employing a microphone. The results indicate that the arc sounds produced during the SAW process are mainly produced by short circuiting and arc reignition. All discrepancies that resulted from arc irregularity or produced irregularities in arc behavior such as extinguishing of the arc and burn-through events, which have a dramatic influence on weld quality, are clearly monitored by acoustic signals. Thus the acoustic method is mainly useful to assess welding process stability and to detect mentioned severe discrepancies in arc behavior.

FUTURE WORK
We have experimentally proved that the acoustic signals are directly related to the Weld quality and the important parameters like current and voltage. This study can be extended to the quantitative analysis of the changes in acoustic signals with the change in parameters and its effect on weld quality. This would help to relate the acoustic signals to inline weld production and identify the regions where weld quality has been compromised. This could help in identification of the weld defect regions and also eventually might help to identify the defect. This would speed up the testing of production weld and also increase the assurance of defect free welding. This research may be very instrumental for setting up an automated system of welding and also help to set up a weld production system all together.