Overview of recent advances of process analysis and quality control in resistance spot welding

Resistance spot welding (RSW) is frequently employed in current industrial occasions. However, the process is multi-field coupled and highly nonlinear, and full of uncertainties and disturbances. This paper presents recent primary advances and progress in process analysis and quality control of the RSW operations. Online welding process analysis, and relative online quality estimation for the welding products, are very important because they can help to save energy and improve the efficiency during actual production. It should deeply interpret the process characteristics, and then reasonable relations between selected monitoring process variables, such as dynamic resistance or electrode displacement, and quality criteria, such as nugget size or tensile-shear strength, can be established. Apart from online process analysis using mathematical tools, using different kinds of auxiliary measuring signals from external sensors and intrinsic process variables to monitor the process and obtain the quality information of the weld is presented and discussed. Then various process control works are reviewed. Besides the various parameters optimization methods, kinds of controllers, including feedback controllers, intelligent controllers and comprehensive controllers which combined the online quality estimation and control strategy application together, for obtaining welds with satisfactory quality, are respectively discussed. It can be seen that the establishment of general models to online process analysis, quality estimation and real time control system design for obtaining welds with satisfactory quality still remains a big challenge in reality. This work can provide references and enlightens for current academic researches or actual production in RSW relative area. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.