Online Weld Quality Inspection System with Infrared Thermography

Technical Report · Sat Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1471927· OSTI ID:1471927

Chen, Jian ^[1]

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1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Today’s passenger vehicle on average contains 4,000 to 6,000 resistance spot welds (RSW). All US automakers perform destructive teardown evaluation to ensure the quality of the spot welds due to their criticality in crash resistance and performance of vehicles. The destructive teardown evaluation is labor intensive and costly. Sponsored by DOE VT Office, ORNL recently developed a prototype system (hardware and software) to non-destructively evaluate the quality of RSW based on infrared (IR) thermography. Highly cost competitive, ORNL’s system has been tested extensively in the laboratory with initial successful production environment validation. Ford, Honda, GM, Chrysler and major Tier One suppliers all have shown keen interest in this new technology. ORNL’s Technology Transfer Office licensed this technology to a small business (APLAIR Manufacturing Solutions) in TN. The licensee planned to develop a new hardware system based on ORNL’s IR NDE technology for real-time online weld inspection. In this CRADA project, ORNL was tasked to assist the licensee to transfer the technology and develop the new product suitable for automotive body-in-white production environment, making the technology ready for ‘real-world’ auto-body assembly line production environment.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1471927
• Report Number(s): ORNL/TM-2018/779; CRADA/NFE-15-05619
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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