QUALITY - Advanced quality assurance of welded and adhesively bonded joints

Important results from the project

The objective with developing a new technique and equipment for quality assurance is to offer Swedish industry an advantage and a powerful competiveness towards international industry within fabrication of joined structures. * Implement enhanced knowledge within quality assurance. * Improved competitiveness and sustainable manufacturing. * Enable further introduction of light material. The intended product, a new method for non-destructive testing, does not need to be motivated as cross functional regarding business areas but can be used within several sectors.

Expected long term effects

The measurement system will enable full-scan of the internal joint geometries and improve the assessment of the quality. The online detection of internal imperfections will enable a new era of QA with the possibility to improve the quality directly in the process. As long as inspections rely on human judgment, errors can be expected to occur and it is impossible to reach full potential in the manufacturing systems. The results will increase the activities within QA and enable more optimized products. This will improve the sustainability and competitiveness for Swedish industry.

Approach and implementation

This project serves to investigate the potential of laser ultrasonic as a modern tool for automated and online non-destructive method for quality assurance of welded and adhesively bonded joints. The intention is to enable the use of this new technology in serial production as well as a tool for inspection engineers. In this initial work different type of material, joint type, joining process, material thickness and defects have been tested to cover the many needs of different interests for a successful formation of the consortium in the follow-up project in this project program.