• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.686-691
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• 2016

In welded steel structures, there are many stress concentration sites such as weld beads, and welding defects are likely to occur at the welded parts. When a repeated fatigue load acts on a stress concentration site, fatigue crack occurs and propagates, leading to fatigue fracture. Therefore, it is necessary to understand fatigue life, crack initiation life, and crack propagation life in order to prevent fatigue failure. In this study, a compliance method was derived for use in the study of fatigue crack propagation characteristics. This compliance can be used for automated measurement of fatigue cracks. The compliance was calculated using an in-house FEM program for a CT specimen. The results of this calculation are presented in relation to a/W and compared with calculation results using the J integral and a program from a previous study. In addition, the strain distribution in the upward and downward directions was calculated from the center of the back face of the CT specimen. In this distribution, the strain tended to decrease from the center to the top and bottom. The compliance method was achieved from these calculations and can be used for automatic execution of crack propagation tests.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.121-127
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• 2018

A system for diagnosing surface defects of long and large pipe inner overlay welds, 1m in diameter and 6m in length, was developed using a Liquid Penetrant Test (PT). First, CATIA was used to model all major units and PT machines in 3-dimensions. They were used for structural strength analysis and strain analysis, and to check the motion interference phenomenon of each unit to produce two-dimensional production drawings. Structural strength analysis and deformation analysis using the ANSYS results in a maximum equivalent stress of 44.901 MPa, which is less than the yield tensile strength of SS400 (200 MPa), a material of the PT Machine. An examination of the performance of the developed equipment revealed a maximum travel speed of 7.2 m/min., maximum rotational speed of 9 rpm, repeatable position accuracy of 1.2 mm, and inspection speed of $1.65m^2/min$. The results of the automatic PT-inspection system developed to check for surface defects, such as cracks, porosity, and undercut, were in accordance with the method of ASME SEC. V&VIII. In addition, the results of corrosion testing of the overlay weld layer in accordance with the ferric chloride fitting test by the method of ASME G48-11 indicated that the weight loss was $0.3g/m^2$, and met the specifications. Furthermore, the chemical composition of the overlay welds was analyzed according to the method described in ASTM A375-14, and all components met the specifications.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.49-54
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• 2007

Since the wall thickness can be up to 6" or greater, welds must be made in many layers, each layer containing several passes. However, the welding time for the conventional welding processes such as SAW(Submerged Arc Welding) and FCAW(Flux Cored Arc Welding) can be required many hours. The aim of this paper is to develop a high speed welding system with multi-torch and laser vision sensor for increasing the production speed on the line and to remove the need for the operator so that the system can run automatically for the complete multi-torch multi-layer weld. It was shown that the developed laser vision sensor and analysis of arc blow for multi-torch were effective for multi-pass seam tracking and stable arc. A new automated multi-torch welding systems for thick wall applications has been proved in several production lines.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.99-106
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• 1996

Development of an automatic TIG welding system incorporating a vision sensor and torch control mechanism leads to an improved welding quality and greater production efficiency. The automatic welding system should be greatly restricted in its size and weight for the LNG(Liquefied Natural Gas) storage tank and also provide a unique torch rotating mechanism which keeps the torch tip in the constant position while the angle is changed continuously to maintain the welding torch substantially perpendicular to the weld line. The developed system is driven by two translation axes X, Z and one rotational axis. A moving line window method is adopted to the image recognition of the corrugated membranes with specular reflection. This method decides original laser stripe patterns in image which is affected by multi-reflection. A self-teaching algorithm, which guides the automatic welding machine with the information provided by the CCD camera without any previous learning of a reference trajectory, was developed for tracking the corrugated membrane of the LNG tank along the weld line.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.50-57
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• 2013

The high temperature thermal attacks in welding can affect the residual stress of a frame for automotive assembly accompanying frame deformation. Also the residual stress can induce the negative effect on durability performance of the automobile. In order to analyze the frame deformation, the simplified test frame which had the similar shape (form) of the real automotive frame was fabricated. The contactless optical 3D scanner was used for the shape difference measurement of the frame between before and after the welding. The FE-model of the test frame was composed and the deformation and residual stress simulation were performed. The simulated results were compared with the measured results for the reference of the frame design following as the variation of welding sequency. The deformation shape of the frame by simulation was in good agreement with that by the experimental measurement. In addition, the optimized welding sequency with reduced deformation after welding could be achieved through these analyses.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.70-75
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• 2000

The weld seam tracking system for arc welding process uses various kinds of sensors such as arc sensor, vision sensor, laser displacement and so on. Among the variety of sensors available, electro-magnetic sensor is one of the most useful methods especially in sheet metal butt-joint arc welding, primarily because it is hardly affected by the intense arc light and fume generated during the welding process, and also by the surface condition of weldments. In this study, a dual-electromagnetic sensor, which utilizes the induced current variation in the sensing coil due to the eddy current variation of the metal near the sensor, was developed for arc welding of sheet metal butt-joints. The dual-electromagnetic sensor thus detects the offset displacement of weld line from the center of sensor head even though there's no clearance in the joint. A set of design variables of the sensor were determined for the maximum sensing capability through the repeated experiments. Seam tracking is performed by correcting the position of sensor to the amount of offset displacement every sampling period. From the experimental results, the developed sensor showed the excellent capability of weld seam detection when the sensor to workpiece distance is near less than 5 mm, and it was revealed that the system has excellent seam tracking ability for the butt-joint of sheet metal.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.112-117
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• 2017

The arc, generated by Tungsten Inert Gas(TIG) welding, is stable and provides excellent quality of the weld. Since automation is difficult, a lot of work is performed by hand. In addition, to obtain the uniform weld quality is difficult when using a base metal having a nonuniform welding line, or when welding inside a pipe. Generally, TIG welding power has the characteristic of constant-current. The welding voltage is changed in proportion to the arc length. Hence, the automatic voltage control equipment should be applied at the TIG welding system. The automatic voltage control equipment has been designed using LabVIEW software. It consists of a manufactured voltage divider circuit, and jig for moving the torch. The voltage measurements and driving of the motor were performed through the algorithm implementation in LabVIEW. Welding was conducted while increasing the arc length. In this process, it was confirmed that the automatic voltage control equipment kept the arc length constant.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.113-117
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• 2011

The frame for automotive assembly can be deformed and remained on the residual stress due to high temperature thermal attacks when in welding. The frame deformation can be made to problems when in assembly with body and the residual stress can affect the negative effect on durability performance of the automobile. In order to analyze the frame deformation, the simplified test frame which had the similar shape (form) of the real automotive frame was fabricated. The contactless optical 3D scanner was used for the shape difference measurement of the frame between before and after the welding. The FE-model of the test frame was composed and the heat transfer and thermal stress simulation were performed. The simulated results were compared with the measured results for the reference of the frame design. The deformation shape of the frame by simulation was in good agreement with that by the experimental measurement.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.59-65
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• 2005

The resistance spot welding is one of the most commonly used welding process for joining the sheet metal in automotive manufacturing process due to higher deposition rates and higher economy achieved. Control variables in the resistance spot welding for achieving high quality are welding current, welding force and welding time. Generally at the manufacturing scene, welding current Vs welding time lobe diagram is used to estimate weldability because controlling welding force is not practical due to economical reasons. However new automotive steel plates have been developed to make lightweight automobiles and to improve resistance against rusting. Also the weldability of these steel plates are worst than the existing steel plates because of changing bare metal and surface plating effect. In consequence of above mentioned reasons, it is necessary to use welding force to present the lobe diagram. In this study, we obtained the welding force Vs welding current lobe diagram for commonly used GA steel plate and found that the second order repression model of tensile shear strength was useful in reducing the number of experiments, and the indentation, and thickness change during welding were used as a response to estimate quantitatively expulsion.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.66-72
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• 2005

An electromagnetic inductive sensor consisted of one exciter and three separated (triple) detectors has been developed for both tracking the weld seam of a workpiece and controlling the sensor-to-workpiece distance (height) simultaneously. The left and right detectors are used to track the seam, while the fore and the other two detectors allow the sensor to determine the height and the gap width by being coupled their outputs together. A series of experiments with the proposed sensor located above a mild steel plate containing a weld seam of gap are carried out to examine the feasibility of the sensor. The results revealed that the proposed sensor could fairly well track the desired seam and also well control the height to be constant even when the gap width of the seam varied. The gap width can be also determined during the seam tracking by using the sensor outputs. As a consequence, these can provide the developed sensor with substantial improvement for industrial uses with respect to the previous electromagnetic sensors being used for the weld seam tracking.