Evaluation of quantitative ultrasonic C-scan testing for refill friction stir spot welding joints based on time-frequency analysis

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on a comparative study of different ultrasonic feature-based C-scan testing imaging methods for characterizing refill friction stir spot welding (RFSSW) joints, and accurately identifying and measuring the nugget boundary. The aim is to explore a suitable method for nugget characterization and automatic size analysis. The research indicates that the frequency-domain C-scan imaging method outperforms the time-domain C-scan imaging method in accurately characterizing the nugget. Furthermore, the C-scan imaging method based on the feature value of the base material zone (BMZ) echo signal performs better than the method based on the nugget echo signal. The tested nugget sizes obtained by using the –6 dB drop-off method to identify the boundaries in the C-scan images are generally larger than the metallographic measurement values. A novel method is proposed in this paper, using the difference in main frequency amplitude values between the BMZ and the nugget as the feature value for the C-scan testing image, and employing the Hough circle transformation for an automatic extraction of joint size. This method achieves improved nugget characterization and higher accuracy in size analysis.