System development for analysis of gas tungsten arc welding

Abstract

The focus of this work was the development of equipment and image processing techniques to observe the melting characteristics at the leading edge of a gas tungsten arc weld. A high speed digital imaging system, along with a macro lens imaging system, were used to obtain high quality images of the weld pool motion in a digital format for computer processing. Once in the computer, a LabVIEW viewer program was used to view the images at various speeds. These images were further enhanced to bring out the leading edge of the weld. Various image processing techniques, including filtering and convolution, were used. Once the proper images were obtained, the Fast Fourier Transform and other techniques were used for the analysis of these images.