Analysis of acoustic signals on welding and cutting

The sounds emitted during the welding and cutting processes are closely related to the processing phenomena, and sometimes they provide useful information for evaluation of their processing conditions. The analyses of acoustic signals from arc welding, plasma arc cutting, oxy-flame cutting, and water jet cutting are carried out in details in order to develop effective signal processing algorithm. The sound from TIG arc welding has the typical line spectrum which principal frequency, is almost the same as that of supplied electricity. The disturbance of welding process is clearly appeared oil the acoustic emission. The sound exposure level for CO{sub 2} or MIG welding is higher than that for TIG welding, and the relative intensity of the typical line spectrum caused by supplied electricity becomes low. But the sudden transition of welding condition oil produces an apparent change of sound exposure level. On the contrary, the acoustics from cutting processes are much louder than those of arc welding and show more chaotic behavior because the supplied fluid velocity and temperature of arc for cutting processes are much higher than those for welding processes. Therefore, it requires a special technique to extract the well meaning signals from the loud acoustic sounds. Furthermore » point of view, the reduction of acoustic exposure level becomes an important research theme with the growth of application fields of cutting processes.« less