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The gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) process is a widely used process that produces quality weldments. But the high heat generation from the GTAW arc can cause extreme temperatures as high as 20,000°C. The residual stresses and deformations are high accordingly. One of the methods for decreasing residual stresses and deformations is to change the welding pattern. In the literature, there are not so many examples of modeling dealing with welding patterns. This paper aims to investigate the influence of welding patterns on the deformations.

In this work, back-stepping patterns and partitioning of the weld line were investigated and the distortions and residual stresses were calculated. By doing this, temperature-dependent thermophysical and thermo-mechanical material properties were used. The temperature distribution and deformation from experiments with the same welding conditions were used for validation purposes.

Seven different welding patterns were analyzed. There is only one pattern with a single partition. There are three patterns investigated for both two and three partitioned weldings. The minimum deformation and the optimum residual stress combination is obtained for the last pattern, which is a three partitioned and diverging pattern.

The most important aspect of this paper is that it deals with welding patterns, which is not much studied beforehand. The other important thing is that the structural part and the thermal part of the simulation were coupled mutually and validated according to experiments.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between arc sound signal and arc height through arc sound features of GTAW welding, which is aimed at laying foundation work for monitoring the welding penetration and quality by using the arc sound signal in the future.

The experiment system is based on GTAW welding with acoustic sensor and signal conditioner on it. The arc sound signal was first processed by wavelet analysis and wavelet packet analysis designed in this research. Then the features of arc sound signal were extracted in time domain, frequency domain, for example, short‐term energy, AMDF, mean strength, log energy, dynamic variation intensity, short‐term zero rate and the frequency features of DCT coefficient, also the wavelet packet coefficient. Finally, a ANN (artificial neural networks) prediction model was built up to recognize different arc height through arc sound signal.

The statistic features and DCT coefficient can be absolutely used in arc sound signal processing; and these features of arc sound signal can accurately react the modification of arc height during the GTAW welding process.

This paper tries to make a foundation work to achieve monitoring arc length through arc sound signal. A new way to remove high frequency noise of arc sound signal is produced. It proposes some effective statistic features and a new way of frequency analysis to build the prediction model.

The paper presents a benchmarking analysis that investigates the efficiency gap in relation to spot welding robots in automotive body shops at foreign and domestic companies in North America. The main purpose of this paper is to determine body shop efficiency improvement opportunities for the domestic companies or the Big Three, therefore reducing the competitive gap and improving business performance.

The following paper is an extension of an earlier dissertation study conducted by EL-Khalil that focused on improving body shop overall efficiency. The Harbour Report was utilized to determine the best in class facilities that must be visited for benchmarking purposes. The data and information presented were obtained from the facilities visited through observations and interviews. The research utilized the corresponding facilities' labs in order to perform measurements and inspect product welding efficiency. The data obtained were a result of a two-year benchmarking study.

The inspection results of spot welds applied on the door flange do not justify the utilization of additional spot welding arm designs and/or robots for the domestic companies. The data presented provide a good opportunity for improving business performance at the body shop Big Three facilities. In order to reduce the current competitive gap, decrease cost, and improve utilization, the Big Three must adopt new strategies (i.e. communization of specific vehicles parts).

The benchmarking study was limited to the aperture area. Researchers are encouraged to test the propositions further on different types of vehicles and different areas of the vehicle body.

Based on the actual findings, this paper presents a case that impacts the improvements of the body shop overall performance in relation to reducing the number of spot welding arm and robot designs at the automotive industry in North America.

The presented gap analysis on body shop spot welding efficiency for automotive companies in North America was not conducted previously. Therefore, the data can be utilized as a benchmark target to drive improvements at the domestic automotive body shops.

Traditional gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) and GTAW-based wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) are notably different. These differences are crucial to the process stability and surface quality in GTAW WAAM. This paper addresses special characteristics and the process control method of GTAW WAAM. The purpose of this paper is to improve the process stability with sensor information fusion in omnidirectional GTAW WAAM process.

A wire feed strategy is proposed to achieve an omnidirectional GTAW WAAM process. Thus, a model of welding voltage with welding current and arc length is established. An automatic control system fit to the entire GTAW WAAM process is established using both welding voltage and welding current. The effect of several types of commonly used controllers is examined. To assess the validity of this system, an arc length step experiment, various wire feed speed experiments and a square sample experiment were performed.

The research findings show that the resented wire feed strategy and arc length control system can effectively guarantee the stability of the GTAW WAAM process.

This paper tries to make a foundation work to achieve omnidirectional welding and process stability of GTAW WAAM through wire feed geometry analysis and sensor information fusion control model. The proposed wire feed strategy is implementable and practical, and a novel sensor fusion control method has been developed in the study for varying current GTAW WAAM process.

This paper aims to present the fabrication of 6061 aluminum alloy (AA6061) using a promising laser additive manufacturing process, called the laser-foil-printing (LFP) process. The process window of AA6061 in LFP was established to optimize process parameters for the fabrication of high strength, dense and crack-free parts even though AA6061 is challenging for laser additive manufacturing processes due to hot-cracking issues.

The multilayers AA6061 parts were fabricated by LFP to characterize for cracks and porosity. Mechanical properties of the LFP-fabricated AA6061 parts were tested using Vicker’s microhardness and tensile testes. The electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) technique was used to reveal the grain structure and preferred orientation of AA6061 parts.

The crack-free AA6061 parts with a high relative density of 99.8% were successfully fabricated using the optimal process parameters in LFP. The LFP-fabricated parts exhibited exceptional tensile strength and comparable ductility compared to AA6061 samples fabricated by conventional laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) processes. The EBSD result shows the formation of cracks was correlated with the cooling rate of the melt pool as cracks tended to develop within finer grain structures, which were formed in a shorter solidification time and higher cooling rate.

This study presents the pioneering achievement of fabricating crack-free AA6061 parts using LFP without the necessity of preheating the substrate or mixing nanoparticles into the melt pool during the laser melting. The study includes a comprehensive examination of both the mechanical properties and grain structures, with comparisons made to parts produced through the traditional LPBF method.

This paper aims to mainly report the impact of torch angle on the dynamic behavior of the weld pool which is recorded and monitored in real time with the aid of a high-speed camera system. The influence of depositing torch angle on the fluctuation behavior of weld pool and the quality of weld formation are compared and analyzed.

The FANUC controlled robotic manufacturing system comprised a Fronius cold metal transfer (CMT) Advanced 4000R power source, FANUC robot, water cooling system, wire feeding system and a gas shielding system. An infrared laser was used to illuminate the weld pool for high-speed imaging at 1,000 frames per second with CR600X2 high-speed camera. The high-speed camera was set up a 35 ° angle with the deposition direction to investigate the weld pool flow patterns derived from high-speed video and the effect of torch angles on the first layer of wire additive manufacture-CMT.

The experimental results demonstrated that different torch angles significantly influence on the deposited morphology, porosity formation rate and weld pool flow.

With regard to the first layer of wire arc additive manufacture of aluminum alloys, the change of torch angle is critical. It is clear that different torch angles significantly influence on the weld morphology, porosity formation and weld pool flow. Furthermore, under different torch angles, the deposited beads will produce different defects. To get well deposited beads, 0-10° torch could be made away from the vertical position of the deposition direction, in which the formation of deposited beads were well and less porosity and other defects.

This paper aims to present the development and experimental study of a fully automated system using a novel laser additive manufacturing technology called laser foil printing (LFP), to fabricate metal parts layer by layer. The mechanical properties of parts fabricated with this novel system are compared with those of comparable methodologies to emphasize the suitability of this process.

Test specimens and parts with different geometries were fabricated from 304L stainless steel foil using an automated LFP system. The dimensions of the fabricated parts were measured, and the mechanical properties of the test specimens were characterized in terms of mechanical strength and elongation.

The properties of parts fabricated with the automated LFP system were compared with those of parts fabricated with the powder bed fusion additive manufacturing methods. The mechanical strength is higher than those of parts fabricated by the laser powder bed fusion and directed energy deposition technologies.

To the best knowledge of authors, this is the first time a fully automated LFP system has been developed and the properties of its fabricated parts were compared with other additive manufacturing methods for evaluation.

Describes the use of welding robots for making bridge panels. The system uses a total of 14 sets of High Speed Rotating Arc welding robots and newly‐developed arc sensor techniques are used with both joint end and bead end sensors. A teaching‐less direct CADCAM system was developed to control the robots. The welding robot system is now in commercial operation with welding efficiencies that are twice those possible with conventional processes.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of sound during gas tungsten argon welding (GTAW), which is very important to effectively monitor the welding quality in future by using the information extracted from sound.

The hardware used in the experiment is described. Then the paper researches the influence of welding techniques (gas flow, welding speed, welding current, and arc length) on arc sound and the distribution of the welding sound field. Finally, the relation between welding power and sound are studied based on Fourier transforms and recursive least square methods.

The sound pressure is affected greatly by gas flow, arc length, and current; welding sound source obeys the dipole model; the sound can be better predicted when the three orders derivative of the welding power are combined together.

This paper provides a new insight into welding sound resource model and a detailed analysis of the influence of the welding sound caused by welding techniques.

In welding there is an intricate coupling between the composition of the material and the shape and depth of the weld pool. In certain materials, the weld pool may not penetrate the material easily, so that it is difficult or impossible to weld, while other seemingly quite similar materials may be well suited for welding. This is due to the convective heat transfer in the melt, where the flow is driven primarily by surface tension gradients. This paper aims to study how surface active agents affect the flow and thus the welding properties by surveying some recent 3D simulations of weld pools.

Some basic concepts in the modelling of flow in a weld pool are reviewed. The mathematical models for a convecting melt, with a detailed model for the surface tension and the Marangoni stress in the presence of surfactants, are presented. The effect of the sign of the Marangoni coefficient on the flow pattern, and thus, via melting and freezing, on the shape of the weld pool, is discussed.

It is seen that it is beneficial to have surfactants present at the pool surface, in order to have good penetration. Results from a refined surface tension model that accounts for non‐equilibrium redistribution of surfactants are presented. It is seen that the surfactant concentration is significantly modified by the fluid flow. Thereby, the effective surface tension and the Marangoni stresses are altered, and the redistribution of surfactants will affect the penetration depth of the weld pool.

The importance of surfactants for weld pool shapes, and in particular the convective redistribution of surfactants, is clarified.