CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0

Introduction This chapter primarily presents a literature survey regarding background material

pertaining to the research subjects of this thesis work. The survey covers the background of the Robotic Welding and parameters, welding discontinuities and defects, welding distortion and the implementation of Design of Experiments (DOE).

2.1

Robotic Welding and parameters Robot welding is the use of mechanized programmable tools (robots), which

completely automate a welding process by both performing the weld and handling the part. The automation of this welding process eliminates the human errors that maybe increase defects. Although the process is automated, there is still having several factors that give significant result on weld quality. Processes such as gas metal arc welding,
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while often automated, are not necessarily equivalent to robot welding, since a human operator sometimes prepares the materials to be welded [3]. The ultimate goal of arc welding is to join two or more materials, through fusion, such that the joint exhibits a sufficient strength and fracture toughness. Every parameter in GMAW welding will give an impact to the physical appearance of the welding results especially the weld bead appearance. These parameters can affect to a great extent the quality of a weld. A good knowledge of their effects on the weld is essential to perform optimum setting according to welder conditions. Important parameters in the GMAW welding are current (Ampere), voltage (Volt) and travel speed (mm/sec) [4]. Current linked directly to the wire, then flow followed by travel speed and distance between torches and weld metal. The amperage is very important due to weld penetration formation especially the depth of the weld penetration and weld fusion. It is to determine the quality and strength of the weld. Arc voltage is directly related to current, as indicated above, and with arc length, increasing with it. The increase of arc voltage widens and flattens the weld bead. Low voltages increase the weld reinforcement and excessively high voltages can cause arc instability, spatter and porosity even undercut. Basically, high speed welding process give the slim and tiny weld bead results rather than slow welding speed can cause the bigger and wider weld bead. Increase the welding speed gives a decrease in the linear heat input to the workpiece and the filler metal deposition rate per unit of length [4].

2.2

Welding Discontinuities and Defects Some discontinuities, or imperfections, that are small or insignificant are

permitted by material specifications, codes or standards. This section will cover various types of weld discontinuities, some of their basic causes, their effects on various types of welds and the images they produce on a radiograph. Discontinuities are imperfections in materials. All metals and welds have imperfections that exist in varying degrees. An imperfection which exceeds the acceptable limits is called a defect. Some discontinuities have no effect on the base metal as long as they do not interfere with the welding process, or become large enough to cause the item to fail when in service [5]. In this project, there are the basic defects that appear during run the welding process. Porosity is the presence of cavities or pores like shows in Figure 2.1 caused by entrapment of gas in molten metal cavities in the weld metal caused by the freezing in of gas released from the weld pool as it solidifies during solidification.

Figure 2.1: Porosity Lack of Fusion (LOF) is the defect that occur when situation where weld metal does not form a cohesive bond with the base metal. It is generally cause by insufficient heat input during welding (Figure 2.2). This defect have to avoid it from occur because of the danger of crack happen to the joint.
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Figure 2.2: Lack of Fusion According to Figure 2.3, lack of penetration (LOP) occur when the weld metal does not extend to the required depth into the joint root causes by low amperage, low preheat, tight root opening, fast travel speed, short arc length.

Figure 2.3: Lack of Penetration Next is undercut defect which occur when a groove melted into the base metal adjacent to the weld toe or weld root and left unfilled by weld metal like shows in Figure 2.4.

Figure 2.4: Undercut Weld metal melting completely through base metal resulting in holes where no metal remains. Commonly cause by excessive heat input.

Figure 2.5: Burn through

2.3

Welding distortion Distortion in a weld results from the expansion and contraction of the weld metal

and adjacent base metal during the heating and cooling cycle of the welding process. Doing all welding on one side of a part will cause much more distortion than if the welds are alternated from one side to the other. During this heating and cooling cycle, many factors affect shrinkage of the metal and lead to distortion, such as physical and mechanical properties that change as heat is applied. These changes, in turn, affect heat flow and uniformity of heat distribution.
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Distortion

Figure 2.6: Distortion

2.4

Implementation of Design of Experiment (DOE) According to Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), Design of Experiment

(DOE) is very powerful method to investigate the nature or the characteristic of experimental study. They was requested by one company that use Resistance Spot Welding (RSW) to do DOE study to determine root causes of torque failures and areas of improvement. That project was performed a full-factorial model requiring a total of 36 runs. The experiment provided optimal values for each factor and showed, surprisingly, that quality improves as the tip pressure is reduced. Regarding to this project, 2 level and 12 factors (parameters) are required to run the experiment on two types of welding joint. A large number of experiments have to be carried out when the number of the process parameters increases. To encounter this matter, Taguchi one of the DOE methods, the Taguchi Method (TM) uses a special design of orthogonal arrays to study the entire process parameter space with only a small number of experiments. Using an orthogonal array to design the experiment could help the engineers to study the influence of multiple controllable factors on the average of quality characteristics and the variations in a fast and economic way, while using a signal-to-noise ratio to analyze the experimental data could help the designers of the product or the manufacturer to easily find out the optimal parametric combinations.
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2.4.1

DOE in Taguchi Method First, in the Taguchi method, the optimum level of input process parameters or

control factors are decided on the basis of statistical analysis of experimental results that makes the process insensitive to the effect of variations due to uncontrollable or noise factors such as environmental temperature, humidity and vibration. Using an orthogonal array to design the experiment could help the designers to study the influence of multiple controllable factors on the average of quality characteristics and the variations in a fast and economic way, while using a signal-to-noise ratio to analyze the experimental data could help the designers of the product or the manufacturer to easily find out the optimal parametric combinations [6]. The Robustness Strategy use tool such as P-Diagram to classify the variables associated with the product into noise, control, signal (input), and response (output) factors. Figure show P-Diagram [7]

Control Factors

Signal Factors

Product/Process

Response

Noise Factors

Figure 2.7: P-Diagram

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In this method, the experiments are performed as per specially designed experimental matrix known as orthogonal array (OA) [6]. The selection of OA is based on the total degree of freedom (dof) of the process. Mathematically, the dof can be computed as: Dof = (number of level) for each factor + (number of levels) 1 x (number of levels 1) for each interaction + 1 Next, Multiple signal to noise ratio (MSNR) is used to represent the quality index at each design point. The signal to noise (S/N) represents the desired part or wastage part. Taguchi method is a widely accepted methodology for contemporary experiment design. In this method, signal-to-noise (S/N) is used to represent a response or quality characteristic and the largest S/N ratio is required. The experimental values of quality characteristics are used to compute the quality loss values for each quality characteristic in all experimental runs. Depending on the experimental objectives, there are several quality characteristic such as target-the-best (TB), larger-the-better (LB) and smallerthe-best (SB). Mathematically, the S/N ratios for TB, LB, and SB type quality characteristics can be computed as [6]: S/N ratio = -10log10 (MSD) (2.1)

Where, MSD = mean square deviation from desired value and commonly known as quality loss function.

For SB-type, MSD = For HB-type, MSD = For TB-type, MSD =

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(2.2) (2.3) (2.4)

Where,

is the observed response or quality value at the ith trial, S is the standard

deviation and, n is the number of trials at same parameter level. In multi-objective optimization, a single overall S/N ratio for all quality characteristics is computed in place of separate S/N ratios for each of the quality characteristic. This overall S/N ratio is known with name of multiple S/N ratio (MSNR). The MSNR for jth trial is computed as given below.

MSNRj =

(2.5) (2.6)

(2.7)

Where

is the total normalized quality loss in jth trial, wi represents the

weighting factor for the ith quality characteristic, k is the total number of quality characteristics and yij is the normalized quality loss associated with ith quality characteristic at the jth trial condition, and it varies from a minimum of zero to a maximum of 1. Lij is the quality loss or MSD for the ith quality characteristic at the jth trial, and Li* is the maximum quality loss for the ith quality characteristic among all the experimental runs [6]. Final stage of this method is using Responses Optimizer. Responses Optimizer can be obtaining by maximize the MSNR. The average value of all MSNR, when a process parameter is at the same distinct level, is used to describe the effect of a process parameter or factor on the quality characteristics at that level. A parameter level corresponding to the maximum average MSNR is called the optimum level for that
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parameter. Then results of optimum level of MSNR were used to fit a second-order polynomial. The results of the regression must be closer to the value of the responses. The predicted value of MSNR (opt) at the optimum parameter levels is calculated by using the following formula [8]. This formula can be use fro the confirmation experiment at the end of this project:

(2.8) Where is the mean MSNR of all experimental runs, k is the number of significant control factors, and mi is the average MSNR for the ith control factor corresponding to the optimum parameter level. Some verification experiments are conducted at the suggested optimum parameter levels to confirm the predicted response [8].

2.4.2

DOE in Factorial Design First, the objective of Factorial Design is to discover which factors influence the

outcome of the experiment and what levels of these factors lead to an experiment with the greatest sensitivity. The aim is usually to maximize the signal to noise ratio so that the numbers of experimental subjects required to detect a given treatment response (or signal) is minimized by using power and sample size calculations. The procedure involves using a vehicle control and a known positive control treatment and attempting to maximize the mean difference, herein designated treatment effect. In this article, variables investigated for their influence on the treatment effect are termed factors. It is also useful to know which factors are relatively unimportant in influencing response so that less attention is given to controlling them [9].
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Then, all dedicated statistical packages should support the multiway ANOVA used to analyze factorial designs, although elementary packages may not allow unequal numbers in each group. Some packages also provide ready randomized plans and analyses for a range of different factorial designs, with up to 15 factors, as well as Plackett- Burman designs with up to 47 factors. Other, more specialized experimental design software is available. Note that these designs are widely used in the manufacturing industry, where the factors are often settings on a machine [10]. Next process is to standardize Pareto Chart contains a bar for each effect, sorted from most significant to least significant. The length of each bar is proportional to the standardized effect, which equals the magnitude of the t-statistic that would be used to test the statistical significance of that effect. A vertical line is drawn at the location of the 0.05 critical values for factors. Any bars that extend to the right of that line indicate effects that are statistically significant at the 5% significance level [11]. Pareto Chart also used to shows the interaction between factors that appear in these welding parameters. A Minitab Response Optimizer tool that shows how different experimental settings affect the predicted responses for factorial, response surface, and mixture designs. Minitab calculates an optimal solution and draws the plot. The optimal solution serves as the starting point for the plot you can modify the settings interactively to see how different setting affect responses. For factorial and response surface designs, you can adjust the factor levels. Optimization plot input variable can be settings for many reasons, including:

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o To search for input variable settings with a higher composite (userdefined) desirability o To search for lower-cost input variable settings with near optimal properties o To explore the sensitivity of response variables to changes in the design variables o To "calculate" the predicted responses for an input variable setting of interest For example, factors of butt joint and T-joint in GMAW must reach certain levels of distortion and defects. Then, adjust the current, voltage, travel of speed and width that will give both joint the minimum distortion and defects. The closer to the red line in optimization plot to the d-value (desirability= 1), the more efficient the factors to the responses. Results of optimum level of Optimization plot were used to fit a secondorder polynomial. The results of the regression must be closer to the value of the responses. Then compare the values between the initial parameters of experiment, Response Optimizer and the confirmation experiment.

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