Investigating the ability of deep learning to predict Welding Depth and Pore Volume in Hairpin Welding
It addresses quality assurance in welding processes, moving beyond defect classification to predict specific weld characteristics, though it is incremental as it applies existing deep learning methods to a new dataset.
This study tackled the problem of predicting welding depth and pore volume in hairpin welding using a deep learning model, achieving MAE values of 0.1079 and 0.0641 respectively.
To advance quality assurance in the welding process, this study presents a deep learning DL model that enables the prediction of two critical welds' Key Performance Characteristics (KPCs): welding depth and average pore volume. In the proposed approach, a wide range of laser welding Key Input Characteristics (KICs) is utilized, including welding beam geometries, welding feed rates, path repetitions for weld beam geometries, and bright light weld ratios for all paths, all of which were obtained from hairpin welding experiments. Two DL networks are employed with multiple hidden dense layers and linear activation functions to investigate the capabilities of deep neural networks in capturing the complex nonlinear relationships between the welding input and output variables (KPCs and KICs). Applying DL networks to the small numerical experimental hairpin welding dataset has shown promising results, achieving Mean Absolute Error (MAE) values 0.1079 for predicting welding depth and 0.0641 for average pore volume. This, in turn, promises significant advantages in controlling welding outcomes, moving beyond the current trend of relying only on defect classification in weld monitoring, to capture the correlation between the weld parameters and weld geometries.