Review of the Recent Trends of Process Monitoring and Control for Double-Wire GMAW Process

Recently, double-wire gas metal arc welding (GMAW) process is more and more prevalently employed in industrial applications and attracted many academic researches. This paper reviewed the recent trends of researches and applications of this process. Three main aspects were included in this paper. The first was the operational process analysis of the process, and the reviewing work was divided into two catalogues: Twin-wire GMAW process and tandem GMAW process, which were two main energy delivery and control formations of the process. This part focused on some negative phenomena, such as arc interruption, during the welding process and their effects on the products quality and process stability. Some works about using different current waveforms combinations and their effects on the welding process were discussed. Also, the works of numerical simulation for this process were mentioned in this part. The second part was about process stability monitoring, and corresponding works focused on establishing quantitative process stability estimation model. The last was the improvement of process control method, and the works mainly focused on the adjustment and modulation of the current waveforms, in order to eliminate negative phenomena, improve the process stability and obtain the products with high quality. Finally, some suggestions about future works were presented. This paper can provide references and enlightens for current academic researches or actual industrial applications in the double-wire GMAW process relative areas.