Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2005) 27: 281287

DOI 10.1007/s00170-004-2171-y

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Wen-Hou Chu Pi-Cheng Tung

Development of an automatic arc welding system using SMAW process

Received: 4 July 2003 / Accepted: 5 March 2004 / Published online: 26 January 2005
Springer-Verlag London Limited 2005

Abstract This paper describes a developed automatic welding ki Coefficient ratio of the molting rate to the arc current.
control system for alternating current shield metal arc welding. ku Coefficient ratio of the molting rate to the arc voltage.
It replaces manual operations which require a well-trained tech- vf Electrode feed-rate.
nician. We derived a mathematical model of the welding control vm Electrode molting rate.
system and identified the value of the system parameters thereof. Ai Fuzzy set on the corresponding supporting set e.
A fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller modulates the rate of an Bi Fuzzy set on the corresponding supporting set e.
electrode feed mechanism that regulates arc current. The elec- Ci Fuzzy set on the corresponding supporting set K
p .
trode feed rate mechanism with this controller driven by an AC Di Fuzzy set on the corresponding supporting set K d
.
servomotor can both compensate for the molting part of the elec- Kd Derivative gain of a PID controller.
trode and the undesirable fluctuation of the arc length during Ki Integral gain of a PID controller.
welding operation. It can also be easily applied to any welding Kp Proportional gain of a PID controller.
system whose electrode is consumed during the welding pro- Ku Oscillation gain at the stability limit under the P-con-
cess. By maintaining the magnitude of the arc current at the troller.
desired value and ensuring the stability of the arc length, excel- Kt Motor constant of the electrode feed-rate mechanism.
lent welding performance can be obtained. The simulation and Tu Period of oscillation at the stability limit under the
experimental results both show that this automatic welding con- P-controller.
trol system, based on the fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller, Ua Arc voltage.
can perform effectively. K
p Crisp output variable K p of the fuzzy controller.
K d
Crisp output variable K d of the fuzzy controller.
Keywords Fuzzy Gain scheduling PID controller K
p,i Value of K
p corresponding to the grade of MF i for
Shielded metal arc welding Welding robot the ith rule.


K d,i Value of K d
corresponding to the grade of MF i for
Nomenclature the ith rule.
a Friction damping coefficient of the electrode feed-rate C(s) Controller of the welding control system.
mechanism. E(s) Error signal of the reference input Ir (s) and the weld-
e Error signal of the fuzzy logic controller. ing current Ia .
e Derivative error of the fuzzy logic controller. G(s) Control plant of the welding control system.
na Number of poles of the ARX model to be identified. H(s) Current sensor of the welding control system.
nb Number of zeros plus one of the ARX model to be U(s) Output signal of the current controller.
identified. Ia (s) Transfer-function of the arc current Ia of the welding
nk Identification delay. control system.
J Total inertia of the electrode feed-rate mechanism. Ir (s) Transfer-function of the reference input of the welding
control system.
W.-H. Chu P.-C. Tung (u) Integral time constant: a singleton membership func-
Department of Mechanical Engineering, tion fuzzy number.
National Central University, Membership function.
Chung-Li, Taiwan 320 i Fuzzy set of the corresponding supporting sets .
E-mail: t331166@ncu.edu.tw
Tel.: +886-3-4267304 i Truth value of the ith rule of the membership function
Fax: +886-3-4254501 values in the antecedent part.
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Ai MF value of the fuzzy set Ai , given some value of e. systems in the control process is growing, especially in the field
Bi MF value of the fuzzy set Bi , given some value of e. of fuzzy logic control [9, 10], due to its empirically demonstrated
xSmall () Fuzzy output variable for the rule Small. robustness [11], as well as its applicability for unmodeled dy-
xBig () Fuzzy output variable for the rule Big. namic system control. Furthermore, the fuzzy control methods
can not only be used as a PID control scheme [12, 13], but it can
also be used to tune the parameters of the PID controller using
1 Introduction a fuzzy gain scheduling [14, 15]. This paper proposes an auto-
matic welding system using a SMAW process based on a fuzzy
Welding machines are widely used in the industry. Of a variety gain scheduling PID controller [16].
of welding processes, stick electrode welding is the most com-
mon. It is more formally known as shielded metal arc welding
(SMAW) and conventionally performed by manual operators. 2 Dynamic system modeling
Although the labor wages continue to rise up and manufacturers
are moving to automate their processes for increasing produc- The schematic structure of our automatic SMAW control sys-
tivity, SMAW still holds a large share of the total welding filler tem is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of the computer-controlled
metal business. This is largely due to its attractive advantages electrode holders driven by a welding robot, a positional table,
including exceptional versatility, low cost of equipment, conve- and a welding power supply. The servomotor A drives a welding
nient power source, low maintenance costs, durability, relative robot, which is served as an electrode feed-rate control mech-
simplicity of operation, and ease of set-up [1, 2]. anism moving up and down, while the servomotor B drives the
The welding performance can be improved by appropriate welding robot along the welding path direction. An electrode
inverter control [3]. There have been many control methods pro- holder is fixed to the welding robot. A current sensor is used to
posed for this such as output current slope control and pulsed generate a feedback signal, so that a closed-loop SMAW control
output current control [4]. Since these control methods have basi- can be achieved. An arc current controller is used to drive servo-
cally ignored the welding problems occurring in the metal trans- motor A, and regulates the feed-rate of the electrode so that the
fer procedure itself, this may result in the welding procedure to arc length can be kept stable to obtain the desired current setting
be performed under non-optimal conditions, so that there can be value. Consequently, this automatic SMAW control system can
only limited reduction of spatter generation, as described in [5]. be considered as an electrode feed-rate control system, or a kind
A more desirable welding performance can be achieved by incor- of arc current control system. The arc current controller plays
porating an instantaneous output current control, which is based a very important role in this automatic welding control system.
on a metal transfer procedure using the feedback current control
method [6, 7]. However, the practical implementation of this type
of control is complex, since it requires an optimum reference
waveform of output currents, and sophisticated adjustment of the
gain of the current controller. All papers on this subject have fo-
cused on gas metal arc welding (GMAW) and gas tungsten arc
welding (GTAW).
The SMAW process is conventionally performed manually.
The arc is initiated no sooner than the electrode touches the base
metal. After igniting the electrode, the heat of the arc melts the
surface of the base metal to form a molten pool at the end of
the electrode, and the electrode supplies the filler metal in the
welding process. In the SMAW process, the electrode also acts as
a consumed material in this welding process. It requires a well-
trained technician to perform such a consumed electrode welding
technique. To develop an automatic welding control system for
replacing manual welding, the main challenge is how to control
the feed-rate of the electrode to preserve the stability of the arc
during the welding process. This is also the central object in this
study.
The best known controller for the industrial application is
the PID controller, whose design requires the determination of
three parameters: the proportional gain, integral time constants,
and the derivative time constant. The Ziegler-Nichols [8] turn-
ing method may be the most popular among the various kinds
of turning methods, which have been developed for this pur-
pose. On the other hand, the application of knowledge-based Fig. 1. Structure of the automatic SMAW control system

A conventional 160 A constant current AC power supply
with a very steep current output slope as shown in Fig. 2, pro-
vides the welding current. The output current is essentially con-
stant in the normal operating range. Such a constant current
power supply is used for numerous welding processes, but pri-
marily for flux-covered stick electrode (SMAW) welding, since
a steady current is very important in these processes. During op-
eration, the desired welding current values are predetermined by
the operator. The fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller controls
the electrode feed-rate, based on the feedback signal obtained
from the current sensor. The desired current value is obtained by
regulating the length of the arc between the electrode and the
work-piece.
We can eliminate arc length fluctuations of a consumed elec-
trode arc welding by modulating the feed-rate of the electrode.
Furthermore, we can stabilize the system parameters, such as the
arc current Ia and the arc voltage Ua selected for the welding
process. To maintain a stable arc length, the electrode feed-rate
v f should be equal to the consumption of the electrode or the
melting rate vm , i.e.,
vf
= vm ,
where v f is the electrode feed-rate, and vm denotes the electrode
melting rate. The electrode melting rate is a function of arc cur-
rent Ia and the arc voltage Ua [17, 18], i.e.,
vm = ki Ia ku Ua ,
where ki is the coefficient ratio of the melting rate to the arc cur-
rent, and ku is the coefficient ratio of the melting rate to the arc
voltage. Substituting Eq. 1 into Eq. 2, we can obtain the follow-
ing equation:
v f ku
Ia = + Ua .
ki ki
Fig. 2. Current output characteristic and the arc static characteristic for
a SMAW welding process with constant current power supply
283
Equation 3 represents the relationship between the arc current Ia
and the arc voltage Ua , based on the assumption that the elec-
trode feed-rate v f is equal to the electrode melting rate vm for
a specific electrode feed-rate.
The operating points of Ia and Ua must always be kept on the
characteristic curve formed by Eq. 3. The welding process with
this operating method will satisfy the condition vm = v f . The
melting rate, vm , will not be equal the electrode feed-rate, v f ,
when the operating point deviates from the characteristic curve.
This results in a fluctuation of the arc length. Equation 3 shows
that the welding current, Ia , is dependent on the electrode feed-
rate, v f and the arc voltage, Ua , for a constant electrode feed-rate
welding process.
The SMAW is classified as a kind of long arc length welding
process. For this process, the welding current Ia affects the elec-
trode feed-rate v f more than the arc voltage Ua . Thus, to simplify
the control of the automatic SMAW welding control system, the
arc voltage Ua can be treated as a disturbance. As a result, the arc
current Ia is almost proportional to the arc electrode feed-rate v f ,
then
vf
(1) Ia = . (4)
ki
The electrode holders driving mechanism, which consists of
a ball screw welding robot driven by the AC servomotor A, is
a first-order velocity dynamic system. It can be expressed by
a transfer function of the form:
(2)
V f (s) Kt
= , (5)
U(s) Js + a
where K t , is the motor constant, J is the total inertia, and a is the
friction (viscous) damping coefficient of the driving mechanism.
The purpose of this driving mechanism is to control the electrode
feed-rate v f , making it equal to the melting rate vm , using the AC
(3)
servomotor A as an actuator. The input signal is the control volt-
age U, applied to the AC servomotor input terminal; the output
of the velocity driving mechanism is the electrode feed-rate v f .
By combining Eq. 4 with Eq. 5, and considering Ua in Eq. 3 as
a disturbance Td , the controlled plant of the automatic welding
process can be expressed as:
Kt
G(s) = . (6)
ki (Js + a)
This can be described by the block diagram shown in Fig. 3.
The automatic SMAW welding control system is illustrated
by the block diagram in Fig. 4. In this figure, G(s), C(s), and
H(s) represent the controlled plant, the controller, and the current
sensor, respectively. The reference input Ir (s) is the command
signal of the welding control system, while the arc current Ia (s)
is the controlled output variable. A feedback voltage signal that
is directly proportional to the magnitude of the arc current Ia is
obtained using a current sensor. The error signal E(s), which is
the difference between the reference current Ir (s) and the current
sensor feedback signal, serves as the input to the controller C(s).
Reference input Ir (s) is subtracted from the current sensor feed-
back signal at the summation point. We can thus obtain the error
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to the methodology proposed by Zhao et al. [16], a fuzzy gain

scheduling PID controller can be obtained as follows:
(1) Normalize the two controller gains K p and K d , the range be-
tween zero and one, i.e., K p , K d [0, 1] via the following
linear transformation:
Fig. 3. Block diagram for an open loop transfer function of the SMAW
welding control system


K
p = K p K p,min / K p,max K p,min ,



K d
= K d K d,min / K d,max K d,min , (8)
 
where the appropriate prescribed ranges K p. min , K p. max
and [K d. min , K d. max ] are determined experimentally.
(2) Determine the parameters K
p , K d
, and by a set of fuzzy
reasoning rules of the following form:

If e is Ai and e is Bi , then K
p is Ci , K d
is Di , and is i

i = 1, 2, , m , (9)
Fig. 4. Block diagram of the controlled plant for an automatic SMAW weld-
ing process where Ai , Bi , Ci , and Di are fuzzy sets on the correspond-
ing supporting sets, and i is a fuzzy number with a singleton
membership function.
signal E(s), which is input to the controller C(s). U(s) is its (3) Seven triangular membership functions are used for the two
output signal, which determines the performance of the welding inputs e and e for the fuzzy controller, while only two are
control system. used for the outputs, K
p , K d
; four singletons define the out-
The values of many unknown parameters in Eq. 6 cannot put i .
be directly obtained. Thus, in order to precisely design a con- (4) The fuzzy sets, Ci and Di , may be either Big or Small and are
troller that satisfies all the requirements, a system identification characterized by the membership function (MF) , where the
technique is required to obtain the value of these parameters. membership function and the fuzzy variables x are repre-
By using the ARX model in the MATLAB Identification Tool sented by the following functions:
Box, the best-fit values of the parameters for the welding control
system are estimated. Accordingly, the nominal mathematical xSmall () = e4 , for the Small rules,
4
model of the SMAW controlling system can be expressed as xBig () = 1 e , for the Big rules, (10)
follows:
where x may be either the fuzzy output variable K
p or K d
.
Ia (s) 19034
= . (7) (5) The truth value of the ith rule in Eq. 11 i is obtained from
U(s) s + 166.9
the product of the membership function values in the an-
It is clear that the transfer function in Eq. 7 is a first-order nom- tecedent part of the rule:
inal transfer function with one pole located on the left half part
of the s-plane. The DC gain of the SMAW control system trans- i = Ai [e] Bi [e] , (11)
fer function is 114, which means that the nominal current output
will be 114 A if we apply 1 V as input to the system. where Ai is the MF value of the fuzzy set Ai given a value
of e, and Bi is the MF value of the fuzzy set Bi given a value
of e.
(6) We determine the crisp output values of the fuzzy controller,
3 Control methods and simulation results
K
p and K d
, for each rule from their corresponding member-
Once the mathematical model of the SMAW control system is ship functions based on the defuzzification process through
obtained via the identification method, we can design a current the following relations:
controller using a traditional control design method. However,

m
since we assume that the arc voltage Ua is a disturbance, the K
p = i K
p,i ,
mathematical model obtained should be a nominal model with i=1
some uncertainties. Therefore, we can not design a current con- 
m
troller for the welding process with sufficient precision by using K d
=

i K d,i , (12)
conventional control methods. i=1
In this paper, we introduce a fuzzy gain scheduling PID con- 
m
troller [16] with a rule-based gain scheduling scheme to control = i i .
the current for this automatic welding control system. According i=1
 285

Here K
p,i is the value of K
p that corresponds to the MF

grade i , for the ith rule.
(7) After obtaining a normalized K
p , K d
, and , the PID con-
troller parameters K p , K d , and K i can be calculated by the
following equations:


K p = K p,max K p,min K
p + K p,min ,



K d = K d,max K d,min K d + K d,min , (13)
K i = K 2p /(K d ) .

(8) A rule of thumb for determining the range of K p and K d is:

K p,min = 0.32K u , K p,max = 0.6K u ,

K d,min = 0.08K u Tu , K d,max = 0.15K u Tu ,
where K u and Tu are, respectively, the gain and the period of
oscillation at the stability limit of the P-controller [8].
(14)
Fig. 7. Parameters of the fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller in Fig. 6
Figure 5 shows the configuration of the automatic SMAW
control system with the fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller. In
this paper the gain, K u , and period Tu of the oscillation are ob-
tained experimentally as 0.75 and 0.2, respectively. The simula-
tion results of the automatic SMAW control system with a fuzzy
gain scheduling PID controller are shown in Fig. 6, where 80 A
step input is the reference command. Figure 7 displays the simu-
lation results for the three control system parameters, K p , K d ,
and K i .

4 Experimental equipment and results

Fig. 5. Schematic diagram for a closed loop SMAW controlling system with
fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller
Fig. 6. Simulation result of the fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller using
80 A as the reference command input
A schematic diagram of the structure of the automatic weld-
ing control system is shown in Fig. 1. It includes a PC-based
controller (586 PC Computer), a welding robot driven by an
AC servomotor, a current sensor, and a welding power source.
The welding current is measured by the current sensor, and then
transferred to a digital signal by an A/D converter, which acts
as feedback to the PC-based controller. The controller evalu-
ates the error signals via the implemented fuzzy gain schedul-
ing PID control algorithm, and sends the output signal through
a D/A converter to an amplifier. The amplifier drives AC servo-
motor A, which is built into the welding robot, to regulate the
electrode feed-rate.
An LEM HAS 200 SI current sensor, which is of the Hall
effect type, is used to measure the welding current. The peak cur-
rent and the rms rated voltage of the sensor are 200 A and 50 V,
respectively. We also use a PC-based controller, which is capable
of realizing the complex control algorithm, to control this weld-
ing system. The welding current command is set to 80 A. The
centerline of the electrode driven by the AC servomotor B is kept
vertical to the welding path and the direction of its movement
is tangential to the welding path. The current controller controls
the electrode feed-rate. The electrode type is E4313, and the core
wire diameter is 2.6 mm.
Figure 8 shows the steady state response of the experimen-
tal arc current for this SMAW controlling system controlled by
a fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller with 80 A as the reference
286

Fig. 8. Experimental arc current output response using 80 A as the step ref-
erence command input

Fig. 10. Plate position welding experiment

command input. Although the sampling time for the welding
control process is 1 ms, the data can only be taken per 5 ms, be-
cause of the limited memory of the control computers MS-DOS
operating system. Figure 9 shows evaluated values of the three
corresponding parameters, K p , K i , and K d .
Unexpected noise can arise during the experimental process
due to errors arising from the derivative term. This kind of noise
is undesirable, especially for faster sampling times, which leads
us to calculate the derivative error, e simply by subtracting the
error at two neighboring sampling times. As a result, the value of
the derivative component is smaller than that of the other parts,
which is why the derivative gain K d in the simulation diagram
is much smaller than that in the experiment plot. Since increas-
ing the reference input command increases the derivative gain
K d , we must set an upper limit for this parameter during the
experiments.
Figure 10 shows the experimental results for a plate pos- Fig. 11. Arc current output for manual operation
ition welding experiment. It shows that the welding result has
uniform ripple beads. Figures 11 and 12 show the arc current
response and the experimented results for a manual operation

Fig. 12. The welding result in Fig. 11

welding process. After comparing Figs. 8 and 10 to Figs. 11

Fig. 9. Experimental parameters K p , K i , and K d of the fuzzy gain schedul-
ing PID controller in Fig. 8
and 12, the stability of the arc welding current, the uniformity
of the welding beads, and the reduction of spatter generation
are improved dramatically. Figure 13 shows the experimental
results for a tube welding process. It is operated with 80 A
as the reference command input. The photographs show that
the automatic SMAW control system works well for both plate
and tube welding processes and can obtain a better welding
performance.

Fig. 13. The tube welding experiment
5 Conclusion
In this paper, an automatic SMAW control system, based on a
fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller is developed for an alter-
nating current power supply welding machine. A mathematical
model of this automatic welding control system is obtained by
analyzing physical laws and the system identification method.
By employing a Hall effect current sensor to measure the arc
current, a desirable closed-loop control system is formed. The
fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller determines the output sig-
nal by evaluating the error signal and the derivative error signal
obtained using a current sensor. This control output signal is
then sent to a welding robot driven by an AC servomotor, so
that the electrode feed-rate mechanism can be controlled and
the arc length can be regulated to obtain the desired current
setting value. We also examine the performance of this fuzzy
gain scheduling PID controller experimentally. The experiments
show that the developed automatic SMAW control system, with
a fuzzy gain scheduling PID controller can not only replace man-
287
ual operations, but can also effectively perform shielded metal
arc welding.
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