There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Spot welding, particularly resistance spot welding (RSW), is a critical joining process in automotive industry. The development of advanced high strength steels for applications in automotive industry is accompanied with a challenge to better understand the physical and mechanical metallurgy of these materials during RSW. The present paper critically reviews the fundamental understanding of structure–properties relationship in automotive steels resistance spot welds. The focus is on the metallurgical characteristics, hardness–microstructure correlation, interfacial to pullout failure mode transition and mechanical performance of steel resistance spot welds under quasi-static, fatigue and impact loading conditions. A brief review of friction stir spot welding, as an alternative to RSW, is also included.

Critical review of automotive steels spot welding: process, structure and properties

This paper presents an overview of resistance spot welding control. The presentation of the physical background of the resistance welding process is followed by the description of the main problems concerning the appurtenant control theory. Solutions to these problems are presented primarily according to the measured signals used and to the type of control strategies.

Overview of resistance spot welding control

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

Poor quality of resistance spot welding (RSW) often causes quality issues like structural integrity and noise in the car body assembly. Research activities for reliable monitoring methods of RSW quality have therefore been extensive. So far, most of the monitoring methods found in literature are good for off-line utilization only and thus very expensive to apply. This paper introduces into a real-time and in-situ RSW quality monitoring method, which takes the input electrical impedance of the welding system as the monitoring signature. This signature is obtained by probing and processing the input voltage and current throughout the welding process. As input impedance characterizes a dynamic system, its variation with time reveals the conditions of the welding process which result in the final weld quality. By recognizing the pattern of the real part by an artificial neural network, we demonstrate that the weld quality could be classified non-destructively and automatically. Due to the fast signal collecting and processing, the quality monitoring is finished almost in real-time, i.e., classification can be completed before the next welding process is started. Another feature of the method is being in-situ because monitoring action does not jeopardize the welding operation or alter any of the welding parameters in general.

Input electrical impedance as quality monitoring signature for characterizing resistance spot welding

Audible sound signals detected during the resistance spot welding (RSW) of zinc coated steels were investigated in order to assess their suitability for estimating the strength of the weld. A new sonic emission indicator was introduced and compared to a commonly used emission count indicator. A new method of spot weld strength estimation based on the two indicators is presented. The advantage of the method is that it makes it possible to establish the stage when the electrode is worn out. The method enables the development of improved RSW process control algorithms.

Zoran Kariž

Papers

Estimating the strength of resistance spot welds based on sonic emission