An Efficient Method for Laser Welding Depth Determination Using Optical Coherence Tomography

Online monitoring of laser welding depth is increasingly important, with the growing demand for the precise welding depth in the field of power battery manufacturing for new energy vehicles. The indirect methods of welding depth measurement based on optical radiation, visual image and acoustic signals in the process zone have low accuracy in the continuous monitoring. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) provides a direct welding depth measurement during laser welding and shows high achievable accuracy in continuous monitoring. Statistical evaluation approach accurately extracts the welding depth from OCT data but suffers from complexity in noise removal. In this paper, an efficient method coupled DBSCAN (Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Application with Noise) and percentile filter for laser welding depth determination was proposed. The noise of the OCT data were viewed as outliers and detected by DBSCAN. After eliminating the noise, the percentile filter was used to extract the welding depth. By comparing the welding depth determined by this approach and the actual weld depth of longitudinal cross section, an average error of less than 5% was obtained. The precise laser welding depth can be efficiently achieved by the method.