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Online Precision Measurement of Weld Indentation in Resistance Spot Welding

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Article  in  IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement · July 2020

DOI: 10.1109/TIM.2019.2943981

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 69, NO. 7, JULY 2020
Online Precision Measurement of Weld Indentation
in Resistance Spot Welding Using Servo Gun
Yu-Jun Xia , Ze-Wei Su , Ming Lou , Yong-Bing Li , and Blair E. Carlson
Abstract— Resistance spot welding (RSW) is the predominate
joining method used for steel auto body assembly. Significant
effort has been made to control and inspect the RSW quality
in real time to guarantee the security and the reliability of
body structure joints. Among the various methods, monitoring
of the surface indentation is proven to be a promising method
to actualize online weld quality assessment. In this article, a new
approach to online measurement of indentation depth for the
RSW process using a servo gun is proposed. The approach
entails the development of a modified measurement system to
eliminate the transmission error of the toothed belt drive and
compensate the deflection of the fixed electrode arm, which
enables precision measurement of the electrode tip displacement
(ETD). Furthermore, consideration is given to explaining the
downtrend of the displacement curve during the hold time within
the RSW process, and the indentation depth at ambient temper-
ature is finally estimated through curve fitting and experimental
correction. The experimental results show that the error of
indentation estimation could be limited to ±30 μm (±2σ ) at
95% confidence level, which far surpasses the performance of the
previous method. Based upon sensitivity analysis, the precision
is proven to be robust to different workpieces ranging from low-
carbon steel to high-strength steel.
Index Terms— Online measurement, resistance spot welding
(RSW), servo gun, weld indentation, weld quality inspection.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE resistance spot welding (RSW) process is widely
applied to the assembly of thin-walled structures because
of its low cost and high efficiency. During the RSW process,
two or more metal sheets are clamped together by a pair
of electrodes, and the passage of a large electric current
heats up the workpiece through the combined resistance of
contact interfaces and the bulk resistance of sheets according to
Joule’s law. After a relatively short period of time, the metallic
sheets are melted locally to form a molten nugget at the
Manuscript received April 21, 2019; revised August 26, 2019; accepted
September 9, 2019. Date of publication September 30, 2019; date of current
version June 9, 2020. This work was supported in part by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China under Grant U1564204 and Grant U1764251,
and in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of
China under Grant 2016YFB0101606-08. The Associate Editor coordinating
the review process was Dr. Mohamed Abou-Khousa. (Corresponding author:
Yong-Bing Li.)
Y.-J. Xia, Z.-W. Su, M. Lou, and Y.-B. Li are with the School of Mechanical
Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China (e-mail:
yongbinglee@sjtu.edu.cn).
B. E. Carlson is with the Manufacturing Systems Research Laboratory,
General Motors Research and Development Center, Detroit, MI 48090 USA
(e-mail: blair.carlson@gm.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIM.2019.2943981
0018-9456 © 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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4465
faying interface and thereby joining the stack-up [1], [2].
Thus, the total resistance between the two electrodes plays
a significant role in weld nugget growth and is one of the
most critical factors influencing the weld quality.
Nowadays, RSW is widely used for sheet metal assembly
in the automotive industry due to its merits, such as high
speed and great adaptability to automation [3]. Unfortunately,
in high-volume auto-body assembly lines, the welding con-
dition varies frequently and inevitably because of the wear
of the machine parts and assembly deviations, i.e., electrode
wear, poor part fit-up, misaligned electrodes, shunting, and
edge welding [4], [5]. Once these issues occur, the initial
contact resistance and bulk resistance in the RSW process are
influenced, leading to considerable inconsistency in the weld
quality and even weld defects [6]. Expulsion and undersized
weld are two of the most common welding problems in
automotive plants, which usually cause significant degradation
of weld strength and collision stability [7]. Since the auto-body
performance and reliability rely on the weld quality, the quality
assessment of welds is critical and necessary for automotive
manufacturers.
Traditional manual means of RSW quality inspection
including the chisel test and ultrasonic testing rarely meet
the current quality control demands on an account of their
shortcomings: small sample, high cost, off-line, and low
reliability, which becomes an obstacle in the development
of intelligent manufacturing of auto bodies [8]. As a result,
the nondestructive testing (NDT) methods, for the online
inspection of 100% of welds at the very moment when they are
produced, becomes imperative and has gained global attention.
To date, significant effort has been devoted to the online
weld quality assessment of the RSW process. A range of
sensors have been employed to collect signals that could
indirectly reflect the weld quality such as dynamic resis-
tance [9], electrode force [10], electrode displacement [11],
power factor [12], acoustic emission [13], sonic emission [14],
and so on. After analyzing these signals, primary features,
including the average value, peak value, increasing rate, curve
length, the area enclosed by the curve, etc., were extracted
and compared with those of good welds to estimate the
weld quality [15]. Generally, statistical and machine learning
algorithms were applied to construct the prediction model or
classifier between the monitored features and weld quality
indicators [16]. The underlying problems in such methods
are of twofold: on the one hand, the selection of signal
features depends on the empirical knowledge; on the other
4466 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 69, NO. 7, JULY 2020
Fig. 1. Examples of a spot-welded macro section [18]. (a) Undersized
weld with slight indentation. (b) Good weld with moderate indentation.
(c) Overheated weld with serve indentation and expulsion.
hand, the relationship between features and weld quality is
straightly treated as a nonlinear black-box system. Therefore,
the performance of the prediction model heavily relies on
mass training data labeled by the weld quality. This usually
encounters issues such as over-fitting and dimension disaster
in practical applications [17].
To avoid training trouble with machine learning algorithms,
a different approach to weld quality evaluation has been
adopted. In 1968, Wu [19] found that the electrodes which
were forced against the sheet metal would impress into the
metal when melting occurred, and this electrode movement
caused a surface indentation after the welding process. It was
put forward in his research that an indentation of 5%–10%
of sheet thickness could guarantee the weld strength. When
expulsion occurs, this ratio could easily exceed 10% and even
reach 30% [20]. However, an extremely severe indentation
is not desired. AWS D8.9M [21] specified that the surface
indentation could be used as a criterion for evaluating the
weld quality, both severe (>30% of sheet thickness) and
slight indentation reflected the poor static strength of spot
welds, as shown in Fig. 1. Thus, online monitoring of surface
indentation became a promising approach to actualizing online
weld quality assessment, and many efforts have been devoted
to realizing the precision measurement of weld indentation.
Bračun et al. [22] and Polajnar et al. [23] developed an
optical method based on laser profilometry to achieve online
3-D measurement of surface indentation. Various indentation
shape features such as the diameter, depth, and volume were
successfully estimated according to specific image processing
algorithms. But the measurement resolution of the optical
method was quite low (about 45 μm), and the facility cost
of such measurement system should be optimized.
Lai et al. [20] and Zhang et al. [24] proposed an online
measurement method to extract the indentation depth from
the servo encoder in a C-type servo gun. The difference
between the moving-electrode displacement at the beginning
and the end time of the welding process was measured as an
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indicator of the indentation depth. The weld lobe based on the
indentation was built and verified via benchmark experiments
afterward to identify the standard range for good welds. How-
ever, the measurement error under laboratory conditions could
reach 80 μm, which is too large compared with the standard
range (5%–30% of sheet thickness). The poor accuracy would
create an error in weld quality judgment and lead to a high
false-alarm rate in practical applications.
Podržaj and Simončič [25], [26] specified that the thermal
expansion of the electrodes would cause a discrepancy in
the displacement measurement throughout the heating and
the hold period. They proposed an image-based technique to
discard this effect. Although the sensors might be intrusive
to the welding process, this method successfully addressed
the difficulties in the high-precision measurement of weld
indentation and reminded others about the measurement error
during the cooling stage.
Moreover, Karloff et al. [27] and Lui et al. [28] presented
a series of works on RSW quality assessment based on real-
time ultrasonic testing. The signal and image processing of
successive A-scans were used to inspect the surface inden-
tation. It was found that the temperature distribution in the
workpiece during cooling did not drastically vary from weld
to weld, and the average longitudinal wave velocity through
the weld was nearly constant. This enabled a strong linear
correlation to be made between the final sheet thickness and
the time of flight (TOF) of a pulse-echo at the point of nugget
solidification. The maximum error of indentation measurement
was less than 1% for 2 + 2 mm plates (about 40 μm).
Compared with Lai’s study, Karloff’s work obtained better
measurement accuracy because the contraction in the cooling
stage is partially taken into account. However, Lai’s system
is not intrusive to the welding process because the signal is
directly obtained from the servo encoder and no additional
apparatus or sensors are required. Both approaches have pros
and cons. To realize the online measurement in practical
applications, both the precision and the interference issue
should be taken into consideration. In this article, a new
approach of weld indentation online measurement for the
RSW process using the servo gun is presented. The effects
of gun stiffness and cooling shrinkage on the measurement
results are systematically investigated to improve the mea-
surement accuracy. Firstly, an improved measurement system
with deflection compensation is developed to obtain the actual
displacement between two electrodes. Then, the behavior of
the displacement curve in the cooling stage is studied and
fitted to calculate the indentation depth at ambient temperature.
Finally, the sensitivity of hold time to measurement error is
analyzed to test whether the method proposed herein could
meet the requirement for practical applications.
II. P RINCIPLES OF M EASUREMENT
A. Displacement Measurement of Moving Electrode
Fig. 2(a) shows a C-type servo gun apparatus for resistance
spot welding. The whole weld gun is made up of several
parts, including the gun frame, servomotor, servo cylinder,
transformer, copper cables, electrodes, and electrode arms.
XIA et al.: ONLINE PRECISION MEASUREMENT OF WELD INDENTATION
Fig. 2. Structural diagram of (a) robotic servo gun and (b) electrode
displacement measurement system.
The moving electrode is driven by a servomotor to gener-
ate a continuous welding pressure in the welding process.
Considering the feedback characteristics of the servo system,
the displacement of the moving electrode can be directly
extracted from the servo encoder of the servomotor, avoiding
the interference with surrounding fixtures and workpieces.
However, one defect of such measurement methods is its
poor accuracy. As shown in Fig. 2(b), the servo cylinder serves
as a transmission between the servomotor and the moving
electrode, and it consists of a toothed belt, a ball screw, and
a pilot sleeve. Apparent transmission errors could be brought
in due to the gap between the ball screw and the backlash of
the toothed belt in the servo gun system. The former mainly
depends on the machining accuracy and can be generally
regarded as the time invariant. But the latter would gradually
increase during prolonged use as a result of aging and belt
slack, which accounts for most of the transmission error. The
total measurement error caused by these factors could reach
80 μm [20].
In this article, an additional incremental rotary encoder is
installed at the end of the servo cylinder through an extension
spindle to improve the measurement accuracy (see Fig. 2).
As the rotary encoder is directly connected to the screw rod
of the servo cylinder, the transmission error caused by the
toothed belt drive could be eliminated. Thus, the measurement
accuracy relies only on the machining precision of the ball
screw and the property of the rotary encoder. The ball screw
lead L b of the servo gun is 20 mm, and the resolution of the
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4467
Fig. 3. Measurement results of the moving-electrode displacement from
the laser sensor versus those from the additional rotary encoder. The moving
speed of the electrode was about 0.1 mm/s.
incremental rotary encoder Re is 32768 pulses per revolution
(PPR). Therefore, the relationship between the rotary encoder
pulse N and the moving-electrode displacement Dm can be
given by
N
Dm = × L s = Me × N (1)
Re
where the measurement resolution Me = L b /Re = 20/32768 =
0.610 μm/pulse. After the spot welding process, the number of
pulses N is extracted from the additional encoder, and then Dm
can be calculated by multiplying N and Me . The maximum
pitch error of the ball screw is ±0.05 mm over 300 mm
length, so the theoretical error of the proposed measurement
method is less than 0.610/2 + 0.05 × 103/300 = 0.472 μm
per millimeter.
In order to calibrate the accuracy of the proposed method,
an OMRON ZX-LD30V laser displacement sensor with a
sensitivity of 0.25 μm was installed on the fixed electrode
and a baffle board was mounted onto the moving electrode.
When the distance between the laser sensor and the baffle
board changes with the movement of the moving electrode,
the corresponding output signal Ul from the laser sensor would
vary from −5 to 5 V. The relation between Ul and Dm is given
by
Dm = Ul × Ml (2)
where the measurement resolution Ml = 0.4 μm/μV. Fig. 3
shows the comparison between Dm values extracted from the
additional rotary encoder and those measured synchronously
through the laser sensor. The two types of measured Dm values
are essentially linear, and the coefficient of determination R 2
is very close to 1. The maximum difference between the two
values is within ±5.940 μm (±3σ ) at the 99.7% confidence
level. Assuming the Dm measured by the laser sensor is
the actual value, the displacement measurement error of the
moving electrode at ambient temperature is less than ±6 μm.
B. Displacement Measurement of Fixed Electrode
In a previous study, the indentation depth was calculated
based on the displacement of the moving electrode only [20].
4468 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 69, NO. 7, JULY 2020

Fig. 4. Force and bending moment acting on the fixed electrode arm of the servo gun in welding. Fx , Fsx , and Mz represent the axial force, shear force,
and bending moment, respectively.

However, this might not work well for a C-type servo gun. to the welding process. The measuring principle of the surface
The fixed electrode arm of the servo gun can be assumed to strain sensor is as follows. The sensor enclosure serves as an
be equivalent to a cantilever beam with limited stiffness, thus elastic transmission element and converts the change in surface
nonnegligible deflection can occur to the fixed electrode arm strain into an internal force. Then, the internal piezoelectric
during the RSW process [29]. Therefore, the displacement of elements subjected to shear strain produce an electric charge Q
not only the moving electrode but also the fixed electrode (pC) proportional to the force. This electrical charge is finally
should be taken into consideration to obtain the actual axial converted to a standard voltage signal U via a charge amplifier.
displacement between the two electrodes, as well as the weld The sensitivity of the charge amplifier Ac is 1 mV/pc, and
indentation depth. the resolution of the surface strain sensor Rs is 80 pC/με.
Fig. 4 shows the force and bending moment analysis of the Therefore, the relationship between U and ε3x should be
fixed electrode arm. The arm is simplified as consisting of Q U
three parts, e.g., P1, P2, and P3, and each part is regarded ε3x == = Ms U (5)
Rs A c Rs
as a uniform cross-section beam. Therefore, the axial force
Fx and the bending moment Mz are evenly distributed in the where the measurement resolution Ms = 1 / ( Ac Rs ) =
longitudinal direction of part P3, and the longitudinal surface 1/(80 × 1) = 0.0125 mV/με. Substituting (3) and (4) into (5),
strain of part P3 is nearly constant. According to elasticity the relation between U and D f could be given by
theory, the longitudinal surface strain ε3x and the deflection λ λ
D f of the fixed electrode can be calculated as follows: Df = ε3x = Ms U. (6)
γ γ
⎧
⎪ F Fl2 w3 C. Fast Calibration of Gun Stiffness
⎪
⎨ε3x = − =γF
E A3 2E IG3 In (6), the coefficients γ and λ are essential factors to mea-
  (3)
⎪
⎪ 1 l2 w3 sure D f . However, the formulas to calculate them are highly
⎩γ = −
E A3 2E IG3 complicated, although the arm is simplified as a uniform cross-
⎧
⎪ F Fl23 F section beam, as shown in (3) and (4). For a real fixed electrode
⎪
⎨D f = + + = λF
E A1 3E I2 E A3 arm with a variable cross section, the calculation of inertia I2
(4) and I3 should be much more cumbersome, which makes the
⎪
⎪
3
⎩λ = 1 + l2 + 1 accurate analytic calculation of γ and λ nearly impossible.
E A1 3E I2 E A3
In this article, a convenient method to acquire the factor
where F is the electrode force, E refers to the elastic modulus λ/γ , which is related to the gun stiffness, is put forward based
of the beam, A1 and A3 are the cross-sectional areas of parts on regression analysis. When the moving electrode is driven
G1 and G3, respectively, l2 is the length of part G2, w3 is the by the servomotor to close the gun, the two electrodes come
width or diameter of the cross section of part G3, and I2 and I3 into contact with one another and apply an electrode force to
are the cross-sectional moments of inertia of parts G2 and part the axially opposing fixed electrode. In this case, Dm could
G3, respectively. γ and λ are the proportionality coefficients be used as the substitution for D f , which makes it possible to
between ε3x and F and between D f , and F, respectively. They obtain D f and ε3x at the same time without any other sensors
can be regarded as indicators of gun stiffness. Apparently, both or devices. Once D f and ε3x are acquired, the factor λ/γ ,
ε3x and D f are proportional to F. Therefore, there should be which is the coefficient between D f and ε3x , can be estimated
a linear relation between D f and ε3x . Once ε3x is known, D f via linear regression.
can be calculated based on ε3x , γ , and λ. The procedure for calibrating the gun stiffness is as follows.
In this article, a surface strain sensor is mounted on the First, close the servo gun and let the electrodes squeeze each
surface of the fixed electrode arm to measure the force- other with a different force Fi (i = 1, 2, . . . , 10). Then, record
proportional strain ε3x (see Fig. 2). The installation place is the servo encoder pulse Ni and the corresponding charge
far away from the electrodes so that the sensor is not intrusive amplifier output Ui at different electrode force levels to get

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XIA et al.: ONLINE PRECISION MEASUREMENT OF WELD INDENTATION
Fig. 5. Fast calibration results of stiffness of the servo gun.
a series of (Ni , Ui ) data pairs, and transform them into (Dm,i ,
ε3x,i ) data pairs using (2) and (5). Finally, use the method of
least squares to approximate the factor λ/γ , as shown in the
following equation:
  
λ n ni=1 Dm,i ε3x,i − ( ni=1 Dm,i )( ni=1 ε3x,i )
≈   ,
γ n ni=1 Dm,i2 −( n
i=1 Dm,i )
2
i = 1, 2, . . . , 10. (7)
Fig. 5 shows the result of the fast calibration of gun stiffness.
Each point stands for a measured data pair (Dm,i , ε3x,i ) at
one specific electrode force in the range of 0.5–5 kN. The
measured Dm exhibits an obvious linear relation with ε3x , and
the coefficient of determination R 2 is nearly 1, indicating that
the fixed-electrode displacement can be indirectly measured
using a strain sensor mounted on the surface of the fixed
electrode arm. According to the fitting statistic, the estimated
λ/γ is approximately 5.155 μm/με, and the root mean square
error (RMSE) is 0.912 μm. Hence, the estimation error of the
fixed-electrode displacement at room temperature is less than
±2.74 μm (±3σ ) at the 99.7% confidence level.
After calibration of the gun stiffness, it is possible to
measure Dm and D f synchronously in the welding process.
As a result, the relative distance between the two electrodes
could be easily calculated as
d (t) = D f − Dm
where d(t) is the so-called electrode tip displacement (ETD)
signal, which represents the sum of the time-variant thickness
of the workpiece stack-up and the thermal expansion of the
electrodes during the RSW process [26]. Substituting (1) and
(6) into (8), d(t) can be obtained as
λ
d (t) = Ms U − Mr N.
γ In [20], the difference between d(t) at the beginning of
Equation (9) describes the measuring principle of d(t) based
on the output voltage U of the charge amplifier and the
servo encoder pulse N. Since the measurement error of the
moving-electrode displacement is within ±5.94 μm, the total
measurement error of the relative displacement between the
two electrodes at ambient temperature should be less than
5.94 + 2.74 = 8.68 μm at 99.7% confidence level.
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4469
Fig. 6. Typical ETD signal during the RSW process. The welded sheets
were 0.8 + 0.8 mm bare DP590 steel sheets, the welding current was 9 kA
with a duration time of 300 ms, and the electrode force was set to 2.6 kN.
(a) Experimental data. (b) Schematic diagram.
D. Indentation Prediction at Ambient Temperature
Fig. 6(a) shows a typical ETD signal during the weld-
ing process. Its trend is demonstrated by the solid curve
in Fig. 6(b), which can be divided into four periods based
on the curve feature [30]. Period I is the squeezing stage
when the electrodes press the metal sheets and hold until the
electrode force becomes stable, so the ETD curve remains
unchanged. In period II, the electric current passes through
the workpiece and heats it up to form the weld nugget. The
(8) ETD signal rises rapidly due to the thermal expansion of the
sheets and the electrodes, which is followed by a slow decrease
once the sheets begin to yield. Then, in period III, the hold
stage, the weld current is shut off, while the electrodes keep
squeezing. The forced cooling by the electrodes shrinks the
workpiece, leading to a continuous reduction in the curve.
Finally, the gun is opened in period IV. The electrodes move
apart from each other, and the distance between the two
(9) electrodes increases again.
period II (point A) and at the end of period III (point C),
i.e., d(A)–d(C), was used as an indicator of the indenta-
tion depth. However, due to the limited hold time (usually
less than 500 ms), the weld is still at elevated tempera-
tures (above 500 ◦ C) when the gun starts to open [31].
The high-temperature metal would further cool down by radia-
tion and conduction in period IV, leading to a further reduction
4470
TABLE I
C HEMICAL C OMPOSITIONS OF A PPLIED S TEEL S HEETS ( WT. %)
in weld thickness. Unfortunately, the above method ignores
this cooling shrinkage and will bring about a considerable
measurement error.
To improve the measurement accuracy, the effect of cooling
shrinkage in period IV should be considered. The dashed curve
dh (t) in Fig. 6(b) is plotted to demonstrate a possible trend
of the ETD signal with an extremely long hold time, and the
curves dh (t) and d(t) overlap during periods I–III. Since the
hold time is long enough, the weld thickness should decrease
continuously due to the temperature reduction in the weld
zone, as well as its rate of decline. When the weld cools down
to ambient temperature (point D), the rate of decline should
approach zero, and the weld thickness will remain unchanged
afterward. Meanwhile, the heated electrodes will also cool to
room temperature and the thermal expansion of the electrodes
should recover. So, dh (D) could be deemed as the ultimate
thickness of the workpiece and the indentation depth (δ) at
room temperature could be calculated as follows:
δ = d(A) − dh (D).
Furthermore, the segment BD of dh (t) could be considered
as an extrapolation of the segment BC of d(t). Assuming there
exists a function g(t) which fits the data points in the segment
BC of d(t), then dh (D) can be approximated to the limit of
g(t) as t approaches infinity. Let the original thickness of the
workpiece d(A) = h. As long as an appropriate function
g(t) is found, the estimated indentation depth δ ∗ can be
given by
δ ∗ = h − lim g(t).
t →∞
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
A. Experimental Conditions
The materials used in this article included a 0.7-mm-thick
bare BUSD sheet, a 0.8-mm-thick bare DP590 sheet, a 1-mm-
thick zinc-coated BLD sheet, a 1.2-mm-thick bare St37-2G
sheet, a 1.5-mm-thick bare BUSD sheet, and a 1.6-mm-thick
zinc-coated DP590 sheet. The as-measured zinc coating was
between 100 and 140 g/m2 . The chemical compositions of
the sheets are given in Table I. The RSW system consisted
of a Medar 6000-s medium-frequency direct-current (MFDC)
welding controller, a Fanuc R2000iB robot, and an Obara C-
type servo gun. Two identical dome-shaped electrodes with
5-mm tip diameters were used to carry out a series of spot
welding experiments with different weld parameters, as listed
in Table II.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 69, NO. 7, JULY 2020
Fig. 7. Fitting results of the four types of functions to ETD data during
period III. (a) Power function. (b) Exponential function. (c) Logarithm
function. (d) Arctangent function.
After the welding process, the surface indentation was
measured using a Mitutoyo digital micrometer caliper with
an accuracy of 3 μm. The measurement of each weld was
repeated three times to obtain a representative average of the
indentation depth. Furthermore, the tips of the anvil and the
spindle of the micrometer caliper were made dome-shaped to
minimize the measurement error.
B. Selection of the Fitting Function
According to (11), g(t) should be a decreasing function
(10) and the limit of g(t) as time t approaches infinity should be
a constant. As a result, the functional equation of g(t) could
be assumed as follows:
a
g (t) = +m (12)
f (t)
where a and m are undetermined coefficients, f (t) is the basic
function, and the limit value of 1/ f (t) as time t approaches
infinity should be equal to zero. Four types of elementary
functions are selected as the candidates for the basic function
f (t), and they are power, exponent, logarithm, and arctangent
(11) functions. Since 1/ f (∞) = 0, the parameter m is just the limit
value of g(t), then (11) becomes
δ ∗ = h − m. (13)
A typical ETD curve of 1.2 mm + 1.2 mm bare
St37-2G is used to test the performance of the four functions
with a welding current of 10 kA, a welding time of 200 ms,
an electrode force of 3.5 kN, and a hold time of 200 ms.
Fig. 7 presents the fitting results of the four functions to
the displacement data in period III. It is evident that the
exponential and arctangent functions exhibit a better fit to
the data than the others. The coefficient of determination R 2
and the RMSE of these two functions are comparable, but the
operational speed in a computer or microcontroller unit (MCU)
of the exponential function is faster than that of the arctangent
function. Thus, the exponential function is selected for g(t).
Fig. 8 shows the predicted values of the weld indentation
depth (δ ∗ ) and the measured ones (δ) for different workpiece
XIA et al.: ONLINE PRECISION MEASUREMENT OF WELD INDENTATION 4471

TABLE II
W ORKPIECES AND W ELDING PARAMETERS OF THE E XPERIMENTS

Fig. 8. Test of the indentation estimation of different workpiece stack-ups (a) 0.7 + 0.7 mm BUSD, (b) 0.8 + 0.8 mm DP590, (c) 1.0 + 1.0 mm BLD,
(d) 1.2 + 1.2 mm St37-2G, (e) 1.5 + 1.5 mm BUSD, and (f) 1.6 + 1.6 mm DP590. The horizontal axis refers to the estimated indentation depth (δ ∗ ) while
the vertical one refers to the measured indentation depth (δ).

TABLE III function is adequate to describe the downtrend of the ETD

R ELATIONSHIP A MONG RMSE, S HEET T HICKNESS , AND B IAS signal during the hold stage, i.e., period III.

C. Correction of the Estimated Indentation

stack-ups. The dashed lines are linear regression curves whose
slopes are forced to be 1. The maximum RMSE of regression
is 14.95 μm (see Table III), implying that the measurement
error of the indentation depth could be limited to ±30 μm
(±2σ ) at the 95% confidence level. The accuracy is robust
to different workpieces ranging from low-carbon steel to
high-strength steel. This result indicates that the exponential
As can be observed in the graphs presented in Fig. 8,
apparent intercepts are found in the regression equations,
implying that there is a bias between the online estimation (δ ∗ )
and the actual measurement (δ) of the indentation depth. In the
previous study, only one kind of workpiece was studied, and
this bias was considered as a fixed systematic error of the
online measurement system [20]. However, in this article,
experiments of multiple workpieces (stack-ups 1–6) are per-
formed. The results show that the bias β0 increases as the sheet
thickness h increases, and the coefficient β0 /h is approximately
0.05–0.06, as listed in Table III. This relationship between h
and β0 infers that the bias is not a systematic error, but rather
a variable related to the sheet thickness. Fortunately, based
upon the current experiments, β0 remains almost unchanged
for one specific workpiece under different welding parameters.
Thus, after a quick calibration of β0 for a specific workpiece

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4472 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 69, NO. 7, JULY 2020
Fig. 9. ETD signal during the RSW process with a long hold time. The
welded stack-up was 0.8 mm + 0.8 mm bare DP590 steel sheets and the hold
time was set to 1000 ms. (a) Experimental data. (b) Schematic diagram.
stack-up, the indentation depth can be estimated by adding β0
to the calculated δ ∗ term, i.e.,
δ ≈ δ ∗ + β0 = h − m + β0 .
Further studies were pursued to investigate the cause of
the bias. Fig. 9(a) shows the ETD curve of a weld with
a 1000-ms hold time. The downward trend of the curve
between 200 and 700 ms is similar to the curve segment
BC in Fig. 6(a). Both the curve value and its rate of decline
decreases gradually with time. However, for times greater
than 700 ms, the rate of decline gradually increases again
resulting in another downward trend. Accordingly, a distinct
transition point E can be found which divides the segment
BC into two periods: III-a and III-b. The fitted curve (expo-
nential) matches well with the data points in period III-a,
but deviates in period III-b. Hence, the estimated indentation
δ ∗ (= h – m) will always be smaller than the experimentally
measured value.
The dashed curve dh (t) displayed in Fig. 9(b) refers to a
possible trend of the ETD signal with extraordinarily long
hold time. Similarly, point D represents the moment when the
weld and the electrodes cool down to ambient temperature
and dh (D) is the ultimate sheet thickness. The real indentation
depth δ can be obtained based on (10). Since the function g(t)
only fits data points of the curve segment BE, the estimated
indentation depth δ ∗ approximates d(A) − dh (E), and the
difference between δ ∗ and δ, i.e., the bias β0 , can be given
by
β0 ≈ dh (D) − dh (E).
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As is well known, the cooling of liquid metals involves
three separate types of shrinkage, e.g., liquid contraction,
liquid-to-solid shrinkage, and solid contraction from elevated
temperatures to ambient temperature. The amount of liquid
contraction is proportional to the reduction in temperature,
as well as the solid contraction. Liquid-to-solid shrinkage
occurs during the solidification, which is accompanied by large
quantities of heat release.
When the hold time in RSW is short, refer to Fig. 6(b),
a large amount of liquid metal exists during the entire hold
period. The liquid contraction occupies the major part of the
shrinkage, resulting in a fast and continuous decline of d(t) in
period III. But when the hold time is sufficiently long, all of the
liquid metal should solidify and then cool to room temperature
during the hold stage, refer to Fig. 9(b). The declining rate
of d(t) in period III-a gradually decreases because of the
heat released by the solidification and the reduction of the
liquid metal. As most of the molten metal solidifies, the solid
contraction becomes the dominant reason for the cooling
shrinkage, corresponding to a recovery of the declining rate
of d(t) in period III-b. Therefore, the turning point E on the
curve segment BC, which divides the curve into two parts due
to different evolution trends, could be regarded as the critical
moment when most of the liquid metal has solidified. Then, the
difference between dh (E) and dh (D), i.e., the bias β0 , should
be equal to the amount of cooling shrinkage mainly caused
by solid contraction. Notice that the analysis is based on the
assumption that the cooling shrinkage of the electrodes would
not vary the downtrend of the electrode displacement.
More notable is that the amount of solid contraction L is
proportional to the reduction in temperature, and the formula
(14) is as follows:
L = αhT (16)
where α is the coefficient of thermal expansion, h is the
total thickness of the workpiece stack-up, and T represents
the decrease in temperature. The coefficient α of steel can be
approximated as a constant from ambient temperature to the
melting point. Meanwhile, T during weld cooling, specifically
from the point of nugget solidification to room temperature,
does not drastically vary for similar materials and workpiece
thicknesses, refer to [27]. Based on this fact, L mainly relies
on the thickness of the workpiece and should be proportional
to h. This might be the reason why β0 is positively correlated
with h (Table III).
D. Influence of Hold Time on Measurement Precision
It is clear that the hold time duration is an important parame-
ter for the proposed method. When the hold time approaches
zero, the curve fitting of the function g(t) becomes impossible.
Several experiments were conducted to study the influence of
the hold time on the measurement accuracy of the proposed
method. The hold times were set to 100, 150, 200, 300, 500,
750, and 1000 ms, and other welding parameters were chosen
from Table II. After welding, the estimated indentation depth
δ ∗ is calculated via the method mentioned above. Since the
(15) segment EC is useless in the fitting of function g(t), as shown
XIA et al.: ONLINE PRECISION MEASUREMENT OF WELD INDENTATION
Fig. 10. Impact of the hold time on the measurement precision of
the proposed method. The welded stack-up was 0.8 mm + 0.8 mm bare
DP590 steel sheets and the welding current was set to 7 and 10 kA.
in Fig. 9(b), only data points in period III-a are used when the
hold time is of sufficient duration.
Fig. 10 highlights the impact of the hold time on the RMSE
of indentation estimation. There is an obvious downward
trend of the RMSE value with increasing hold time. When
the hold time is very short, the deviation between δ and
δ ∗ + β0 is large (see the orange data points). As the hold
time increases from 50 to 200 ms, the RMSE drops quickly
from 63.3 to 12.1 μm. When the hold time is longer than
200 ms, a further reduction of RMSE could be achieved.
Although the RMSE value turns out to have a slight upward
trend after the hold time reaches 500 ms, it is still smaller
than 12.1 μm, which indicates that the measurement error is
limited to ±24.2 μm (±2σ ) at the 95% confidence level (see
the blue data points). In actual production, the duration of
the hold time is rigidly restricted because a shorter hold time
contributes to improving the production cycle time. However,
a hold time longer than 200 ms is suggested to guarantee a
good measurement precision of the proposed method. When
the hold time is set to 200 ms, the measurement error could
be limited to ±30 μm (±2σ ) at the 95% confidence level,
as shown in Table III.
E. Comparison to the Previous Method
Aside from the study mentioned above, a comparative test
between the previous method [20] and the new approach
was performed. Fig. 11 shows the indentation measurement
as a function of hold time using the previous method. The
RMSE of the previous method is much larger than that of
the method proposed in this article (see Fig. 12). Even when
the hold time is set to 200 ms, the maximum error could reach
±74 μm (±2σ ) at the 95% confidence level. This is attributed
to the deflection of the fixed electrode arm being ignored and
only the moving-electrode displacement is used to calculate
the indentation depth.
Meanwhile, as shown in Fig. 12, the regression intercept β0
of the previous method significantly decreases with the growth
of the hold time, because the cooling shrinkage after the servo
gun opens is neglected. A longer hold time will result in a
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4473
Fig. 11. Indentation estimation of 0.8 mm + 0.8 mm bare DP590 steel sheets
with various hold times using the method of [20]. (a) 100 ms. (b) 200 ms.
(c) 300 ms. (d) 500 ms.
Fig. 12. Comparison of measurement precision between the new method
and the previous method [20]. The welded stack-up was 0.8 mm + 0.8 mm
bare DP590 steel sheets. (a) Bias and (b) RMSE.
larger measured value of δ ∗ although the true indentation depth
δ might change slightly. Thus, the bias calibration should be
repeated for each unique hold time. On the contrary, the bias
β0 of the new method remains around 86 μm when the hold
time ≥200 ms. Only one calibration is necessary for a certain
workpiece stack-up to guarantee the measurement accuracy,
which makes it more feasible to implement the proposed
method in production.
IV. C ONCLUSION
A new online measurement approach of weld surface inden-
tation for RSW using a servo gun is proposed and tested in
this article. The measurement system is modified based on the
previous study and the effect of cooling shrinkage is taken
into account to improve the measurement accuracy. From the
experimental analysis above, the following conclusion can be
drawn.
1) By eliminating the transmission error of the toothed
belt drive and compensating for the deflection of the
fixed electrode arm, the newly developed measure-
ment system of the ETD shows a good performance.
The measurement error at ambient temperature is less
than ±8.68 μm at a 99.7% confidence level.
2) An exponential function is proven adequate to explain
the downward trend of the ETD signal during the
4474 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 69, NO. 7, JULY 2020
hold period. The difference between the original sheet
thickness and the limit of the function can be marked
as an indicator of the indentation depth at ambient
temperature. But there is a bias in the measurement,
which is found in positive relation to the sheet thickness
and is proven not to be a systematic error.
3) The bias error is nearly unchanged for one specific
workpiece stack-up and could be easily compensated for
through an initial calibration. After calibration, the error
of indentation estimation could be limited to ±30 μm
(±2σ ) at 95% confidence level. The accuracy is robust
to varying steel sheets ranging from low-carbon steel to
high-strength steel.
4) The duration of the hold time is a significant parameter
that influences the measurement precision. The accuracy
can be promoted by increasing the hold time. Consider-
ing the production cycle time, a hold time longer than
200 ms is suggested to guarantee a good measurement
precision for the proposed method.
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Yu-Jun Xia received the M.Sc. degree from the
Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China,
in 2016. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree
with the School of Mechanical Engineering, Shang-
hai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
His current research interests include monitoring
and control of resistance spot welding process, espe-
cially the online quality inspection.
XIA et al.: ONLINE PRECISION MEASUREMENT OF WELD INDENTATION
Ze-Wei Su received the B.Sc. degree from Shanghai
Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 2017,
where he is currently pursuing the M.Sc. degree with
the School of Mechanical Engineering.
His current research interests include monitoring
and control of resistance spot welding process, espe-
cially the real-time expulsion control.
Ming Lou received the Ph.D. degree from Shanghai
Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 2016.
He is currently with the School of Mechanical
Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His
current research interests include advanced welding
and joining processes development of lightweight
and dissimilar materials.
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4475
Yong-Bing Li received the Ph.D. degree from
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China,
in 2005.
He has been a Professor with the School of
Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong Uni-
versity, since 2015. His current research interests
include advanced welding and joining processes
development of lightweight and dissimilar materials,
and the monitoring and control of resistance spot
welding process.
Blair E. Carlson received the Ph.D. degree from
the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA,
in 1997.
He has been a Lab Group Manager with General
Motors Research and Development, Detroit, MI,
USA, since 2008. His current research interests
include advanced welding and joining process devel-
opment for lightweight systems, and the monitoring
and control and machine learning of fusion welding
processes.