Arc welding quality monitoring by means of near infrared imaging spectroscopy

The search for an efficient on-line monitoring system focused on the real-time analysis of the welding quality is an active area of research, mainly due to the widespread use of both arc and laser welding processes in relevant industrial scenarios such as aeronautics or nuclear. In this work, an improvement in the performance of a previously designed monitor system is presented. This improvement is accomplished by the employment of a dual spatial-spectral technique, namely imaging spectroscopy. This technique allows the simultaneous determination of the optical spectrum components and the spatial location of an object in a surface. In this way, the spatially characterization of the plasma emitted during a tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding is performed. The main advantage of this technique is that the spectra of all the points in the line of vision are measured at the same time. Not only are all the spectra captured simultaneously, but they are also processed as a batch, allowing the investigation of the welding quality. Moreover, imaging spectroscopy provides the desired real-time operation. To simultaneously acquire the information of both domains, spectral and spatial, a passive Prism-Grating-Prism (PGP) device can be used. In this paper the plasma spectra is captured during the welding test by means of a near infrared imaging spectroscopic system which consists of input optics, an imaging spectrograph and a monochrome camera. Technique features regarding on-line welding quality monitoring are discussed by means of several experimental welding tests