Quality assessment using dynamic voltage characteristics in small scale resistance spot welding of titanium alloy

The voltage between the electrodes in smallscale resistance spot welding (SSRSW) of titanium alloy was collected by data acquisition system. The experiments revealed that the dynamic voltage signal included a lot of welding quality information. In order to demonstrate this finding and monitor the welding quality,the back-propagation artificial neural network (ANN) was employed to forecast the nugget diameter. The maximum predicted error of ANN was about 6.5%. Adjusting and monitoring the voltage waveform could be used to forecast the formation of weld nugget and monitor the quality of welded joints.