Adaptive control of an arc welding process

Abstract

A pseudogradient adaptive algorithm is successfully applied to self-tune a proportional-integral (PI) puddle-width controller for consumable-electrode gas metal arc welding. The gradient of the output with respect to the controller parameters is approximated and used to form a steepest-descent algorithm to minimize the squared output error. Experimental data confirming the algorithm performance are presented.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>