Quality control and assurance in fabrication of welded structures subjected to fatigue loading

Abstract The current paper presents a comprehensive overview of weld quality control and assurance of welded structures where the major failure prevention is due to fatigue loading. It gives the drawbacks and limitation of quality control systems, international weld quality standards, and guidelines used in today’s weld production. Furthermore, in recent development in quality control and assurance of welded structures, a new online method is presented. The main target is to enable a complete, online evaluation of large quantities of welds in an accurate and repeatable fashion. Information gathered will not only be used for determining the weld quality level with respect to the fatigue strength but also to be evaluated for use in improved process control, in welding power sources, and robot control systems. It is verified that the new online method, a new laser scanning technology, and algorithms can successfully be used as modern tools for automated unbiased geometrical weld quality assurance and implemented in weld production environment.