Measurement 154 (2020) 107475

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Measurement
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/measurement

Weld bead penetration identification based on human-welder subjective

assessment on welding arc sound
Yanfeng Gao a,b,⇑, Jiamin Zhao a, Qisheng Wang a, Jianhua Xiao a,b, Hua Zhang b
a
School of Aeronautic Manufacturing Engineering, Nanchang Hangkong University, Nanchang, Jiangxi 330063, China
b
School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai 201620, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Utilizing arc sound signals to monitor the penetration states of weld bead is a promising method.
Received 20 September 2019 However, the correlation between penetration states and arc sounds is relatively weak, and arc sounds
Received in revised form 25 November 2019 easily affected by background noise. To distinguish the penetration states of weld bead from arc sound
Accepted 30 December 2019
signals, a novel method was developed in this paper. This method utilized the subjective assessments
Available online 7 January 2020
of human welders on arc sounds to build mathematical model, and to identify penetration states.
Firstly, a dissimilarity matrix of arc sound pairs was made according to the subjective assessments of
Keywords:
human welders on these sound pairs. Subsequently, the correlations of penetration states with auditory
Weld penetration
Human subjective assessment
features of arc sounds were obtained based on this dissimilarity matrix. Finally, a support vector machine
Arc sound was built to identify the penetration states. The results show that the proposed method has a high correct
Multiple-dimensional scaling method rate in identifying the penetration states of weld bead.
Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction achievements. However, the devices that used in these methods

Penetration states of weld bead significantly influence the ser-
vice performance of weld products. Therefore, it is very important
to monitor the penetration states of weld bead real-timely [1].
However, due to the extreme high temperature in welding process,
it is impossible to directly measure the penetration states online.
Some of indirectly measurement methods have been developed
to monitor the penetration states online in the past few years.
Lin et al. [2] utilized weld pool resonance property to monitor
the penetration states of gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) bead.
In their study, arc light was used to sense the weld pool resonance
and detect its penetration states, but the welding process was lim-
ited to a stationary arc welding. Huang et al. [3] used low-power
laser to acquire the 3D surface of weld pool and based on it to
detect the penetration states in a stationary GTAW process. Zhang
et al. [4–6] developed a vision-based sensing system to reconstruct
the 3D weld pool surface in real time, and based on the geometry of
weld pool surface to detect the penetration states. Jin et al. [7]
developed a composite vision sensing system to reconstruct the
3D surface of weld pool and predict the pool tail height. These
researches proposed numerous feasible approaches for the real-
time monitoring of welding process, and acquired abundance
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: gyf_2672@163.com (Y. Gao).
are complicated, which hinders the application of them in manu-
facturing practices.
Arc sound signals contain abundant information of welding pro-
cess. Compared to the methods mentioned above, acquisition of arc
sound signals in welding process is comparatively simple. Cudina
et al. [8] thought that the irregular variation of arc sounds reflect
the instability of welding process. They pointed out it was a feasi-
ble approach that using arc sound signals to monitor the welding
quality. Pal et al. [9] found that the arc sound signals significantly
influenced by the metal transfer modes. It is because the arc energy
usually changes sharply with the metal transfer modes. Ma et al.
[10] proposed a concept of arc sound channel and its equivalent
electrical model. Based on this model, the welding quality was
monitored with arc sound signals. The results of their study
showed that arc sound signals significantly affected by the chang-
ing of arc energy. However, there is no significant causality
between penetration states and arc sounds. Therefore, it is difficult
to identify penetration states based on arc sound signals.
To realize the classification and states identification from
weakly relevancy signals, fuzzy clustering [11], recurrence plot
method [12], support vector machine [13,14], artificial neural net-
work [15] and other methods had been developed and adopted in
various applications. Lv et al. [15] introduced a typical back propa-
gation artificial neural network for identification of the penetration
states in pulse gas tungsten arc welding. Song et al. [16] studied the

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2020.107475
0263-2241/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 Y. Gao et al. / Measurement 154 (2020) 107475
arc sound signals in variable polarity plasma arc welding. They built
a hidden Markov model to identify the penetration states. Zhang
et al. [17] developed feature selection approaches to select fre-
quency components of arc sounds. A new classification model inte-
grating support vector machine with grid search optimization and
cross-validation was proposed by them to identify the penetration
states of aluminum alloy weld bead. These researches have been
primarily applied in laboratorial environments, and acceptable
identification results were acquired. However, the arc sound signals
are vulnerable to the background noise. It is difficult to maintain a
high identification correct in an industrial environment. Therefore,
it is a challenge to monitor penetration states according to arc
sounds in an industrial environment.
The experiences in many manufacturing practices show that a
professional human welder can make a roughly judgment on pen-
etration states according to the arc sounds that they heard in the
welding process, even in a strong noisy environment. Many
researches verified that human auditory system definitely has
excellent anti-noise performance. Therefore, based on the subjec-
tive assessment of human welder on the arc sounds to identify
penetration states of weld bead probably is a feasible approach,
which could be used in industrial environment. Unlike the conven-
tional digital signal processing methods, human auditory system
usually perceives the surrounding circumstances based on the
auditory properties of sounds, such as loudness, pitch and timbre.
Multiple dimensional scaling (MDS) analysis is a method that com-
monly used to analyze the timbre of sounds [18,19]. This method
firstly requires testers to assess the dissimilarity of two sounds,
and then the dissimilarity data are expressed as the distances in
a multi-dimensional geometry space, and last the distances are cal-
culated by some of auditory features. Chen et al. [20] adopted MDS
method to identify the vehicles from their sounds in a noisy envi-
ronment. Wang et al. [21] studied the under-water noises based on
MDS method and found that the timbre of under-water sounds
could be described in a five dimensional space. Liang et al. [22]
studied the constitution of vehicle noises and found that the noise
space is a four dimensional space in MDS model. Yang et al. [23]
studied the performance of human listeners and logistic regression
in discriminating underwater targets. They found that logistic
regression and several human subjects demonstrate similar perfor-
mances when discriminating man-made and natural targets. An
appropriate method that fuses logistic regression and human
strategies was developed to improve the identification accuracy.
However, to our best knowledge, there is no literature available
that specifically researches penetration states identification
according to subjective assessment of human welder.
In this paper, a model of human welder assessments on weld-
ing arc sounds is built, and to identify penetration states of GTAW
weld beads. Firstly, eleven students are chosen as the testers to
listen to fifteen pairs of arc sounds that collected from three pen-
etration states. And then these testers assess the dissimilarity of
every sound pairs. Subsequently, a MDS method is used to ana-
lyze the data in the dissimilarity matrix that made by the eleven
testers. Afterwards, a stepwise regression method is adopted to
build the correlations of the MDS model with the auditory fea-
tures of arc sounds. Finally, a support vector machine is used to
identify penetration states based on the built MDS model. The
structure of this paper is as follows. The experimental device
and the characteristics of arc sounds signals in time and fre-
quency domains are introduced in section 2. The human subjec-
tive assessment on arc sounds and the modeling of them with
MDS method are presented in section 3. The building process of
correlation equations about MDS with auditory features is dis-
cussed in section 4. The penetration states identification and
experimental results are presented in Section 5. The conclusions
of this study are summarized in section 6.
2. Arc sound signals acquisition and analyzing
2.1. Arc sound signals acquisition devices
The welding arc sound signals acquisition devices are shown in
Fig. 1. A TIG300S DC welder is used as the welding power source
and the conventional non-wire-feed GTAW welding process is
implemented in the experiments. The material of base metal is
Q235 mild steel. It commonly used in industrial production and
the thickness of it is 2.5 mm. The voice collector which used in
the experiment is produced by CRY sound company and it consists
of a CRY331 microphone and a CRY506 amplifier. The voice collec-
tor is fixed on a welding platform as shown in Fig. 1. The distance
of microphone to the welding arc is 200 mm during welding pro-
cess. A USB3202 acquisition card is used to collect the arc sound
signals with 40 KHz acquisition frequency.
2.2. The penetration states of weld bead
The penetration state of weld bead is a continual process that
changes with the increasing of molten depth of base metal. How-
ever, in general the penetration states are usually classified into
three categories: non-penetration, full-penetration and excessive-
penetration. The different penetration states of welding bead that
produced by GTAW process are shown in Fig. 2.
It is observed from Fig. 2a that in non-penetration state the
weld bead width on front side is small, and there is no trace on
the reverse side, and the heat affected zone (HAZ) on the cross side
is shallow. In full-penetration state (Fig. 2b), the weld bead width
is relative large and there is an apparent molten trace on reverse
side, and on the cross side the depth of heat affect zone nearly
equal to the thickness of the base metal. In excessive-penetration
state (Fig. 2c), the reverse side of the weld bead clearly collapses
downward. To meet the requirement of industrial application,
weld products should have constant full-penetration state.
2.3. The arc sound signals in time-domain and frequency-domain
To analyze the characteristics of arc sound signals in different of
penetration states, six welding experiments are implemented in
this study. In the six welding experiments, two of them are imple-
mented in non-penetration state, and two are implemented in full-
penetration state, and the other two are implemented in excessive-
penetration state. The welding parameters in the six experiments
are shown in Table 1. The arc sound signals collected from the
six experiments are shown in Fig. 3.
It is observed from Fig. 3 that the signals of the six experiments
have no apparent differences in time domain. The amplitudes and
the fluctuation of them are almost same. The characteristics of
these six sound signals in frequency domain are shown in Fig. 4.
It is observed from Fig. 4 that the majority frequency of arc
sounds distribute in the frequency range of less than 6 KHz, while
some minority can be found in the nearby 10 KHz. For the non-
penetration and full-penetration states, the distribution of the arc
sound frequency is no obvious difference. For the excessive-
penetration state, the amplitudes of the frequency in the range of
less than 6 KHz are slightly lower than that of non-penetration
and excessive-penetration states.
From the analysis of arc sound signals in the time and frequency
domain, it can be found that distinguishing the penetration states
from arc sound signals is very difficult. Therefore, many researches
proposed some of signal processing and feature extraction meth-
ods. However, the arc sound signals are vulnerable to the back-
ground noises, which cause more difficulties for the identification
process.
 Y. Gao et al. / Measurement 154 (2020) 107475 3

Argon gas cylinder

Welding gun

Moving platform

Welding power
source Welding gun Voice
collector
Base metal

Fig. 1. Welding arc sound signals acquisition system.

HAZ HAZ
HAZ

Front side Front side Front side

Cross Cross Cross

Reverse side side Reverse side Reverse side side
side

(a) Non-penetration (b) Full-penetration (c) Excessive-penetration

Fig. 2. The penetration states of weld bead.

Table 1
Welding parameters in the six experiments.

Experiment Welding current (A) Welding speed (mm/min) Thickness of base metal (mm) Penetration states
1 100 18 4 Non-penetration
2 105 21 4 Non-penetration
3 115 22 4 Full-penetration
4 115 22 4 Full-penetration
5 110 16 4 Excessive-penetration
6 110 20 4 Excessive-penetration

It is known from many manufacturing practices that a skilled
human welder can make a roughly judgment about the penetration
states through listening the arc sounds. And many experiences and
researches show that human auditory system has high anti-noise
capability. Therefore, in this paper a novel method that based on
the subjective assessment of human welder is proposed, and to
identify the penetration states.
3. Human subjective assessment on the welding arc sounds
3.1. Experimental design
To acquire human welder subjective assessment on the welding
arc sounds, eleven students were selected as the testers in the
experiment. These students consist of seven males and four
females, and the ages of them are 22–28, and three of them famil-
iar with the welding arc sound and the others have no any relative
experience about welding. The test samples are fifteen segment
welding arc sound signals which are collected from different weld-
ing processes. All of the students did not know any information
about the arc sounds before test. The arc sound samples of no.1
to no.5 (as shown in Table 3) come from non-penetration state,
no.6 to no.10 come from full-penetration state, and the no.11 to
no.15 come from excessive-penetration state. The sampling fre-
quency of arc sounds is set as 40 KHz. Through repeatedly testing,
it is found that if the time length of the arc sound is more than five
seconds, then the listeners could make a specific assessment.
Therefore, the time length of these arc sound samples is five
seconds.
Paired comparison method was adopted in the subjective
assessment experiments. The students need to listen to two seg-
ments of arc sounds, and then give an assessment of dissimilarity
of them. There are 225 pairs of arc sounds should to be assessed.
And among of them, there are 15 pairs of sounds should compare
with themselves (i-i) and the other 210 pairs of sounds should to
be compared in bi-direction (i-j and j-i). To improve the reliability
of assessment, these students firstly listen to all of the arc sound
samples once time before testing. During testing process, the inter-
val time of playing two arc sound segments in one pair is two sec-
4 Y. Gao et al. / Measurement 154 (2020) 107475

4 4 4

2 2 2
Arc sound s/V

Arc sound s/V

Arc sound s/v

0 0 0

-2 -2 -2

-4 -4 -4
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5

Time t/s Time t/s Time t/s

(a) non-penetration(1) (b) non-penetration(2) (c) full-penetration(1)

6 6
4

4 4

Arc sound s/V

2 2
Arc sound s/V

Arc sound s/V

0 0 0

-2 -2
-2

-4 -4
-4
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5

Time t/s Time t/s Time t/s

(d) full-penetration(2) (e) excessive-penetration(1) (f) excessive-penetration(2)
Fig. 3. The welding arc sounds in three different of penetration states.

onds. After playing a pair of arc sounds, there are five seconds
pause. And in this pause time, the students make an assessment.
To avoid the effect of fatigue on the assessment, every fifteen min-
utes the students are allowed to have a rest, and the total time
length of one experiment is restricted to less than one hour.
The dissimilarity of two arc sound signals is set as seven grades
from 1 to 7 in the experiments, and the meanings of them are
shown in Table 2. Grade 1 means the two arc sounds are fully
same, and grade 7 means the two arc sounds are totally different.
To ensure the reliability of assessment results, if a student
whose assessment result is apparently different from other stu-
dents then this student should be rejected. A least connection hier-
archical cluster method is adopted in this paper to analyze the
assessment results of these students. Firstly, the data of the assess-
ment result only include the two arc sounds that come from differ-
ent samples (i – j). The result is shown in Fig. 5a. And then the
assessment data include all of the 225 samples. Because in the
all of the samples, there are two pairs of arc sounds are totally
same but played with different sequence (i-j and j-i). Ideally, the
assessment result should be same for the same two pairs of arc
sounds even the playing sequence of them is inverse. However,
actually the assessment results of most of students are not same.
The analysis result of hierarchical cluster is shown in Fig. 5b.
It is observed from Fig. 5a that all of the students are clustered
together. It is means that there are no obvious differences between
the students when listen to the arc sound pairs that only come
from different samples. From Fig. 5b, it can be seen that the student
no.6 is apparent different with other students. He cannot be clus-
tered together with other students. Therefore the assessment
result of this student is rejected in the later analysis. After rejected
the data of the no.6 student, the assessment results are shown in
Table 3. The row and column of Table 3 are the fifteen arc sound
samples. The arc sounds in 1–5 come from non-penetration state,
6–10 come from full-penetration state and 11–15 come from
excessive penetration state. The elements in Table 3 are the grade
ranges of dissimilarity that assessed by ten students. For example,
the element in the location of (1,2) is 2 ? 5, where 2 is the lowest
grade value and 5 is the highest grade value that made by the ten
students. It means that one student think that the arc sound 1 is
slightly different with arc sound 2, so he give the grade of dissim-
ilarity is 2. Another student maybe thinks that the two arc sounds
are heavily different, so he give the grade is 5.
Obviously, the matrix of Table 3 is an asymmetrical matrix,
which means the playing sequence of the arc sounds has an effect
on the assessment of students. It is observed from Table 3 that the
grades of dissimilarity are relatively low when the arc sound pairs
come from the same penetration states. However, between differ-
ent penetration states, the grades of dissimilarity are relatively
high. For example, the ranges of the grades are mainly within
1 ? 4 when the two arc sounds both come from non-penetration
state. However, the ranges of the grades are mainly within 3 ? 7
when one arc sound comes from non-penetration state and the
other comes from excessive-penetration state. It is means that
even if the most of students are not familiar with the welding pro-
cess they still can distinguish the difference of the arc sounds that
come from different penetration states. Based on the assessment of
these students, this paper will build a mathematical model of the
arc sounds to identify the welding penetration states.
 Y. Gao et al. / Measurement 154 (2020) 107475 5

10000 10000 10000

8000 8000 8000

Arc sound s/V

Arc sound s/V

Arc sound s/V

6000 6000 6000

4000 4000 4000

2000 2000 2000

0 0 0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 5000 10000 15000 20000

Frequency f/Hz Frequency f/Hz Frequency f/Hz

(a) non-penetration(1) (b) non-penetration(2) (c) full-penetration(1)

10000 10000 10000

8000 8000 8000

Arc sound s/V

Arc sound s/V

Arc sound s/V

6000 6000 6000

4000 4000 4000

2000 2000 2000

0 0 0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 5000 10000 15000 20000

Frequency f/Hz Frequency f/Hz Frequency f/Hz

(d) full-penetration(2) (e) excessive-penetration(1) (f) excessive-penetration(2)

Fig. 4. The frequency distribution of the six arc sounds.

Table 2
The grades of dissimilarity.

Grades 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Dissimilarity of two sounds
Fully same Slightly different Heavily different Totally different

7 7
11 11
1 5
9 9
Students number

Students number

10 2
5 10
6 4
2 8
8 3
3 1
4 6
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
Square Euclidean distance Square Euclidean distance
(a) The arc sound samples are i-j and i≠j (b) the arc sound samples are i-j and j-i
Fig. 5. Hierarchical cluster of students.
6 Y. Gao et al. / Measurement 154 (2020) 107475

Table 3
The dissimilarity matrix of welding arc sound.

Arc sounds Non-penetration Full-penetration Excessive-penetration

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Non-penetration 1 1 ? 2 2 ? 5 2 ? 5 2 ? 4 2 ? 5 2 ? 5 3 ? 6 3 ? 7 3 ? 6 4 ? 6 5 ? 7 4 ? 7 6 ? 7 6 ? 7 6 ?7
2 1 ? 3 1 ? 3 1 ? 4 1 ? 4 2 ? 4 2 ? 6 3 ? 5 2 ? 6 2 ? 4 3 ? 4 4 ? 7 5 ? 7 5 ? 7 6 ? 7 7
3 1 ? 4 1 ? 3 1 ? 3 2 ? 4 2 ? 5 3 ? 5 3 ? 6 2 ? 5 3 ? 5 3 ? 5 5 ? 7 5 ? 7 6 ? 7 6 ? 7 6 ?7
4 1 ? 4 1 ? 6 1 ? 7 1 ? 5 2 ? 3 3 ? 5 2 ? 5 2 ? 4 2 ? 5 3 ? 5 5 ? 7 6 ? 7 5 ? 7 4 ? 7 5 ?7
5 1 ? 4 2 ? 3 1 ? 3 1 ? 4 1 ? 3 2 ? 5 3 ? 5 2 ? 6 2 ? 6 2 ? 6 5 ? 7 5 ? 7 6 ? 7 6 ? 7 6 ?7
Full-penetration 6 1 ? 5 2 ? 4 2 ? 5 1 ? 6 2 ? 5 1 ? 4 2 ? 4 2 ? 5 2 ? 6 2 ? 5 5 ? 7 3 ? 7 3 ? 7 5 ? 7 4 ? 7
7 1 ? 3 2 ? 4 2 ? 5 2 ? 4 1 ? 4 2 ? 5 1 ? 6 1 ? 4 2 ? 5 3 ? 6 5 ? 7 4 ? 7 4 ? 7 5 ? 7 6 ? 7
8 1 ? 4 2 ? 4 1 ? 5 1 ? 6 1 ? 5 2 ? 6 2 ? 5 1 ? 5 2 ? 5 2 ? 6 3 ? 6 5 ? 7 4 ? 7 5 ? 7 4 ? 7
9 1 ? 4 2 ? 4 2 ? 4 2 ? 5 2 ? 5 2 ? 6 2 ? 4 1 ? 4 1 ? 5 2 ? 5 4 ? 7 4 ? 7 4 ? 7 3 ? 7 3 ? 7
10 1 ? 5 2 ? 5 2 ? 4 1 ? 4 1 ? 4 2 ? 5 2 ? 4 1 ? 5 2 ? 4 1 ? 6 4 ? 7 4 ? 7 5 ? 7 5 ? 7 4 ? 7
Exces-penetration 11 3 ? 7 4 ? 6 5 ? 7 4 ? 7 4 ? 7 3 ? 7 2 ? 7 1 ? 7 1 ? 7 2 ? 6 1 ? 3 1 ? 4 1 ? 2 1 ? 4 2 ? 4
12 3 ? 7 4 ? 7 4 ? 6 3 ? 7 3 ? 7 4 ? 7 3 ? 7 3 ? 7 3 ? 7 2 ? 7 1 ? 7 1 ? 2 1 ? 2 1 ? 4 1 ? 4
13 3 ? 7 2 ? 7 3 ? 7 3 ? 7 3 ? 7 3 ? 7 3 ? 7 3 ? 6 2 ? 7 2 ? 7 2 ? 3 1 ? 3 1 ? 2 1 ? 3 1 ? 4
14 4 ? 7 6 ? 7 5 ? 7 5 ? 7 4 ? 7 4 ? 7 2 ? 7 2 ? 7 3 ? 6 2 ? 7 2 ? 6 1 ? 6 1 ? 5 1 ? 3 1 ? 6
15 5 ? 7 5 ? 7 4 ? 7 4 ? 6 4 ? 7 3 ? 7 3 ? 7 2 ? 7 2 ? 7 3 ? 7 2 ? 4 2 ? 5 1 ? 3 1 ? 4 1 ? 3

0.038
3.2. Modeling of human subjective assessment

With paired comparison method, human subjective assess- 0.036

ments on the arc sounds that collected from three penetration
states are acquired. To analyze these data, a multiple dimensional
scaling (MDS) method was adopted in this paper. The MDS method
includes following three steps. Step 1: the subjects (or listeners)
evaluate the dissimilarity of arc sound pairs. Step 2: the data of dis-
similarity are transformed into a multiple dimensional Euclidean
space. Step 3: the every dimension in the Euclidean space is
expressed by acoustic parameters.
To acquire an appropriate fitting model, the dimensions of fit-
ting model are set as 2–6 in MDS method for analyzing the dissim-
ilarity matrix. SPSS is a kind of software that suitable to be adopted
to make a MDS analysis. The values of stress and relative coeffi-
cient square (RSQ) under 2–6 dimensional models are calculated
by SPSS software, and their results are shown in Table 4.
In general, small stress and large RSQ values indicate that the
fitting model is better. Compared the values of stress and RSQ, it
is found that in 4–6 dimensional models the stress values are near
to 0.1. Therefore, 4–6 dimensional models are better to fit the per-
fect matching model. Considerate the complexity of the model in
the later analysis, the dimensions of the model should not too
large. To further determine the dimensions of model, the changes
of normalized stress with the increase of dimensions are analyzed.
In MDS method, a normalized stress function is adopted to eval-
uate the deviation of one fitting model from the perfect matching
model. The Eq. (1) is the expression of a normalized stress function.
X  2 X
f NS ¼ ðdij  dij Þ = dij
2
ð1Þ
i<j i<j

where, dij is the distance in the original space; dij is the distance in
the fitting space. MDS method uses iterative methods to calculate a
minimum value of normalized stress function. The analysis results
are shown in Fig. 6.
Fig. 6 usually is called as scree plot. It describes the process of
scree slipping along a mountain slope. Generally, based on the
Normalized Stress 0.034
0.032
0.030
0.028
2 4 6 8
Dimensions number
Fig. 6. Changes of normalized stress with the dimensional number.
scree plot, the dimensions of fitting model should are selected in
the range of steep slope, and the dimensions at the bottom of slope
usually are ignored. It is observed from Fig. 6 that when the dimen-
sions more than 4 the slope of the graph becomes small and
changes slowly. Considerate the values of Table 4 and the shape
of Fig. 6, the dimensions of the fitting model of arc sounds in Eucli-
dean space are selected as four. After determine the dimensions of
fitting model, in SPSS software every arc sound sample can be
expressed by the determined dimensional vector, and the four
dimensional vectors for the fifteen arc sound samples are shown
in Table 5.
To clearly observe the classification results of the arc sounds
based on the MDS model, the data in Table 5 are plotted in
Fig. 7. Fig. 7 consists of six sub-figures and each of them represents
the classification result in a two dimensional Euclidean space. It is
apparently that the five excessive-penetration samples are fully
distinguished from other two penetration state categories in the
six sub-figures. For the ten samples that come from non-
penetration and full-penetration categories are roughly catego-

Table 4
Stress and RSQ under 2–6 dimensional models.

Dimensions 2 3 4 5 6
Stress 0.19588 0.14255 0.11319 0.10246 0.09171
RSQ 0.86852 0.88933 0.88896 0.90357 0.90698
 Y. Gao et al. / Measurement 154 (2020) 107475 7

Table 5 bead. Based on some previous researches there are some of typical
Values of fifteen arc sound samples in four dimensional Euclidean spaces. auditory features of sound. The auditory features that used in this
D1 D2 D3 D4 section are list in Table 6.
Arc sound 1 0.345 0.146 0.947 1.504 The auditory features that listed in Table 6 have specific physi-
Arc sound 2 0.293 0.481 1.539 0.896 cal meanings and usually adopted in the classification of large
Arc sound 3 1.326 0.032 0.018 1.397 sound sample sets. The values of them are easily obtained from
Arc sound 4 0.613 1.191 0.152 1.269 the original arc sound signals. In this section, these auditory fea-
Arc sound 5 1.316 0.803 0.821 0.569
Arc sound 6 1.533 0.108 0.545 0.271
tures in the fifteen arc sound samples are calculated and acquired
Arc sound 7 0.055 1.539 0.803 0.268 firstly. And then a stepwise regression method is adopted to build
Arc sound 8 0.289 1.139 0.136 0.795 the equations between dimensions in MDS model and these audi-
Arc sound 9 0.074 0.324 1.38 0.309 tory features.
Arc sound 10 0.754 0.818 0.254 0.376
In stepwise regression process, firstly the predictive variable
Arc sound 11 1.618 1.278 1.013 0.211
Arc sound 12 0.754 2.046 0.775 0.89 (auditory features in Table 6) that has highest correlative index
Arc sound 13 1.823 0.853 0.72 1.175 with the dependent variable (dimensions in MDS model) is
Arc sound 14 0.889 0.964 1.081 1.978 searched and selected. In this step a regression equation that has
Arc sound 15 0.788 0.869 2.19 0.952 one independent variable is built. And then the next predictive
variable that makes the equation has maximum variation is
selected and added into the regression equation. Therefore, after
rized in the space of D1-D4, D2-D4, and D3-D4. The results of Fig. 7
this step there are two independent variables in the regression
manifest that, based on the subjective assessment on the welding
equation. Through repeat this process, the others predictive vari-
arc sounds of the students, the penetration states can be identified.
ables are selected and added into the regression equation until
there is no significant variable exist. Every time when a new vari-
4. The feature extraction of arc sound based on the human able is added into the regression equation, the hypothesis testing is
subjective assessment model implemented to test the reliability of the equation. In this section, a
typical F-hypothesis testing method is used to test the equation
In Section 3 a four dimensional MDS model is built and based on until no new variable is added and no existing variable is removed
it the different penetration states are classified. However, the from the equation. The regression results are shown in the follow-
dimensions in this model have only mathematical meanings but ing equations.
without the physical meanings. To implement the identification D1 ¼ 0:004SC  8:336SS2 þ 31:92 ð2Þ
of penetration state based on the arc sound signals, the physical
meanings of these dimensions in the MDS model should be
D2 ¼ 0:003SC þ ð1:739  105 ÞR  9:765SS2 þ 28:528 ð3Þ
acquired. In this section, a stepwise regression method is adopted
to obtain the equations between dimensions and some of physical
D3 ¼ 10:575SS2 þ 8:204 ð4Þ
features of arc sound signals.
In general, a human welder usually bases on the auditory fea- D4 ¼ 418:006SE  403:765 ð5Þ
tures of arc sounds to identify the penetration states of a weld

Non-penetration Non-penetration Non-penetration

2 Full-penetration Full-penetration
2 Full-penetration
Excessive-penetration 2 Excessive-penetration Excessive-penetration

1 1
1
D4
D2

D3

0 0 0

-1 -1 -1

-1 0 1 2 -1 0 1 2 -1 0 1 2
D1 D1 D1

Non-penetration Non-penetration Non-penetration

Full-penetration
2 Full-penetration 2 Full-penetration
2 Excessive-penetration
Excessive-penetration Excessive-penetration

1 1
1
D4

D4

0 0
D3

-1 -1 -1

-1 0 1 2 -1 0 1 2 -1 0 1 2
D2 D2 D3

Fig. 7. The arc sounds in four dimensional spaces.

8 Y. Gao et al. / Measurement 154 (2020) 107475

Table 6
Auditory features and their physical meanings.

Features Symbol Physical meaning

Spectral centroid SC The centroid of the sound signals in frequency domain
Spectral spread SS1 The width of frequency spectrum in the two sides of SC
Spectral skewness SS2 The symmetry of frequency spectrum in the two sides of SC
Spectral kurtosis SK The sharpness of frequency spectrum
Spectral rolloff SRO The incline degree of frequency spectrum
Spectral irregularity SI The irregularity of frequency spectrum
Spectral entropy SE The disorder state of arc sound
Spectral flatness SF The flatness of frequency spectrum
Roughness R The beat phenomenon of the sounds
Zero crossing rate ZCR The rate of sound cross zero
Attack time AT The rise time of sound rising from beginning to the peak
Attack slope AS The slope of sound rising from beginning to the peak
Low energy ratio LE The ratio of sound signals lower than their average value

Table 7
Welding parameters and penetration states.

Experiment Welding current (A) Welding speed (mm/min) Thickness of base metal (mm) Penetration states
1 100 18 4 Non-penetration
2 103 21 4 Non-penetration
3 105 21 4 Non-penetration
4 95 21 4 Non-penetration
5 98 21 4 Non-penetration
6 114 24 4 Non-penetration
7 114 24 4 Full-penetration
8 115 22 4 Full-penetration
9 115 22 4 Full-penetration
10 115 22 4 Full-penetration
11 110 16 4 Excessive-penetration
12 110 20 4 Excessive-penetration

Fig. 8. The arc sound sample distribution in three dimensional spaces.

In the equations of (2), (3), (4) and (5), the independent vari-
ables are SC (spectral centroid), SS2 (spectral skewness), R (Rough-
ness) and SE (spectral entropy). Therefore, the relationships
between the dimensions in the MDS model and the auditory fea-
tures are acquired, and based on these auditory features the pene-
tration states could be identified.
It is observed from Table 7 that the welding parameters in
experiment 6 and 7 are same but the penetration states of them
are different. It manifests that the welding process are vulnerable
to the effect of outside noises, which makes it very difficult for
identification of penetration states. The arc sound samples are col-
lected from these welding experiments and are used in the pene-
tration states identification of weld bead.

5. The identification of penetration states based on the 5.2. Identification results

subjective assessment model
In identification process, the arc sounds collected from experi-
5.1. Welding experiments parameters ments that listed in Table 7 are divided into several segments

Table 8
To verify the validity of the proposed method in the identifica- The significance of the dimensions in MDS model.
tion of penetration states, welding experiments are designed and
Dimensions D1 D2 D3 D4
implemented. The welding parameters and the penetration states
Significance 0.3299 0.4501 0.1452 0.0748
in these experiments are listed in Table 7.
 Y. Gao et al. / Measurement 154 (2020) 107475
Table 9
Confusion matrix for penetration states recognition.
Penetration states Non-penetration Full-penetration
Non-penetration 86.47% 13.53%
Full-penetration 10.56% 89.44%
Excessive-penetration – –
Global correct rate – –
and the time length of each segment is 100 ms. There are 200 arc
sound samples come from non-penetration states, 191 samples
come from full-penetration states, and 149 samples come from
excessive-penetration states. Based on the equations of (2)-(5),
the corresponding auditory features of each arc sound sample are
calculated, and the dimensions in MDS model are acquired. Fig. 8
is the distribution of these arc sound samples in a three dimen-
sional Euclidean space. The three axes of Fig. 8 represent the
dimensions in the MDS model that had been built in Section 3.
It is observed from Fig. 8 that in the three dimensional space of
D1-D3-D4, the arc sound samples that collected from excessive-
penetration state are separated with other two categories. And in
the three dimensional space of D2-D3-D4, the arc sound samples
that collected from non-penetration state are separated clearly.
Therefore, the proposed model has a potential capability to identify
the penetration states.
To realize the identification of penetration states automatically,
a support machine vector in the four dimensional space is
designed, and in the designed support vector a polynomial core
function is adopted. In the each of penetration state samples, 30
of them are selected randomly as the training data to train the sup-
port machine vector. The training results show that the dimensions
in MDS model have different significance and the values of their
significance are list in Table 8.
Based on Table 8 and the Eqs. (2)–(5), the spectral centroid,
spectral skewness and roughness are the dominant factors in the
MDS model. These auditory features reflect the frequency distribu-
tion and the beat phenomenon of the sounds. The support vector
machine model that built in this section is used to identify the rest
450 samples of arc sounds. The identification results are shown in
Table 9.
In Table 9, the data in the first row manifest that 86.47% sam-
ples that come from non-penetration state category are classified
as non-penetration state, while 13.53% of them are identified as
full-penetration state. It is found that the identification correct rate
of excessive-penetration state is 100%, and the global correct rate
attain to 91.1%. The results in Table 9 show that the proposed
method has a super capability in the identification of penetration
states based on arc sound signals.
6. Conclusions
To achieve online weld bead penetration identification via arc
sounds, a novel method was proposed in this study, and the valid-
ity of it was verified with welding experiments. The conclusions
can be summarized as follows:
(1) Time and frequency domain analysis of arc sound signals
show that there is no obvious difference among the arc sound
signals that collected from different penetration states.
Therefore, it is very difficult to identify the penetration states
based on the conventional digital processing methods.
(2) Paired comparison method was adopted in the subjective
assessment experiments. A dissimilarity matrix was made
by eleven testers. The results show that the difference of
the arc sounds collected from different penetration states
are distinguished by these testers.
9
Excessive-penetration Global correct rate
– –
– –
100% –
– 91.1%
(3) MDS method was used to establish a mathematical model.
This model transforms the data in the dissimilarity matrix
into a four-dimensional space. The relationships between
dimensions in the four dimensional space with arc sound
auditory features are acquired by stepwise regression
method.
(4) Experimental results show that the penetration states are
identified by the proposed method, and the global correct
rate attain to 91.1%. The study of this paper provides a pos-
sible method for monitoring penetration states online, and it
has a potential application in industrial practices.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Yanfeng Gao: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing- Origi-
nal draft, Resources. Jiamin Zhao: Software, Investigation. Qisheng
Wang: Investigation. Jianhua Xiao: Writing - review & editing.
Hua Zhang: Supervision.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (51465043). The ele-
ven students are acknowledged for their help during the subjective
assessment testing of welding arc sound signals.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2020.107475.
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