Online Monitoring and Control of Butt-Welded Joint Penetration during GMAW

Abstract

Butt welding is an important link to ensure welding quality, and the penetration state of the weld is the main criterion to achieve this. Online monitoring and control of the penetration state of welded joints is an important measure to ensure welding quality. The molten pool image is monitored by a visual sensor in the gas metal arc welding (GMAW) process, and the bottom molten pool width is predicted by the regression network model. Combined with the real-time control method, the welding current is changed to monitor and control the bottom weld width in real time. Butt-welding experiments with different groove angles verified that the proposed method could achieve satisfactory control accuracy and generalization ability. For butt-welding experiments with constant groove angles of 30° and 45°, the MAE of the controlled backside melt width to the target values was 0.2603 mm and 0.2620 mm. Therefore, it provides a feasible method for the online control of weld penetration.