Sensing and control of double-sided arc welding process

The welding industry is driven to improve productivity without sacrificing quality. For thick material welding, the current practice is to use backing or multiple passes. The laser welding process, capable of achieving deep narrow penetration, can significantly improve welding productivity for such applications by reducing the number of passes. However its competitiveness in comparison with traditional arc welding is weakened by its high cost, strict fit-up requirement, and difficulty in welding large structures. In this work, a different method, referred to as double-sided arc welding (DSAW) is developed to improve the arc concentration for arc welding. A sensing and control system is developed to achieve deep narrow penetration under variations in welding conditions. Experiments verified that the pulsed keyhole DSAW system developed is capable of achieving deep narrow penetration on a 1/2 inch thick square butt joint in a single pass.