This talk reviews the basic physical and statistical models and methods used in accelerated testing. Current research in this area will be outlined and areas for future research will be described. Routine consulting in an industrial setting can generate may interesting research questions for a perceptive observer. These questions tend to be directly related to application or at most one step removed, and hence and usually simple to state. In this talk, we present several examples of such problems in an attempt to convince academic researchers of the value of seeing industrial processes and their control systems in action.
Reality is often stranger than the best imagination.
However, the relationship between weld quality and various process conditions, including abnormal process conditions, has not yet been systematically studied. Engineering knowledge is applied in statistical model selection. From the analysis, it is found that abnormal process conditions, such as axial misalignment, angular misalignment, poor fitup, edge weld, and electrode wear, significantly affect weld size and thus cause large variations in weld quality. Although they may help increase the weld size, abnormal process conditions generally lead to less robustness of the process. In order to minimize the effects of the abnormal process conditions, a robust parameter design is formulated using the statistical models developed from the experimental data.