On line quality inspection in tailor welded blank based on laws texture energy and structured light

Tailored blank laser welding has become a critical joining process in a number of manufacturing industries, including automotive, medical, and aerospace. Even if the welding process involves very high-tech equipment, the final product is not necessarily free of defects such as lack of fusion or penetration and porosities. This is the reason why it is important to inspect the welds quality. The conventional method for the quality inspection of weld seams is based on the structured light deformation, however, if a weld seam hasn´t a groove profile, and this method is limited. A new method based on combination of Laws texture energy and structured light is proposed in this paper. A weld seam region and a structured light region are extracted respectively, and then the intersection operation with respect to the two regions can be carried out. The given method can also inspect weld seams without structured light deformation. Experiments are conducted with this method, then the considered width measurement is well measured and weld defects can also be detected.