Defect Identification for Mild Steel in Arc Welding Using Multi-Sensor and Neighborhood Rough Set Approach

Welding technology plays a vital role in the manufacturing process of ships, automobiles, and aerospace vehicles because it directly impacts their operational safety and reliability. Hence, the development of an accurate system for identifying welding defects in arc welding is crucial to enhancing the quality of welding production. In this study, a defect recognition method combining the Neighborhood Rough Set (NRS) with the Dingo Optimization Algorithm Support Vector Machine (DOA-SVM) in a multisensory framework is proposed. The 195-dimensional decision-making system mentioned above was constructed to integrate multi-source information from molten pool images, welding current, and vibration signals. To optimize the system, it was further refined to a 12-dimensional decision-making setup through outlier processing and feature selection based on the Neighborhood Rough Set. Subsequently, the DOA-SVM is employed for detecting welding defects. Experimental results demonstrate a 98.98% accuracy rate in identifying welding defects using our model. Importantly, this method outperforms comparative techniques in terms of quickly and accurately identifying five common welding defects, thereby affirming its suitability for arc welding. The proposed method not only achieves high accuracy but also simplifies the model structure, enhances detection efficiency, and streamlines network training.