Patent ID: 7775415

Claim:
A method for assessing quality of a spot weld, the method comprising: placing an acoustic probe having a plurality of ultrasonic transducers arranged in a two-dimensional array on a spot weld under test; generating a series of ultrasonic signals via the two dimensional array toward the spot weld and analyzing responses therefrom to measure two dimensional profiles of front and back indentation marks of the spot weld; correcting the responses in accordance with the profiles; recognizing a subset of the responses as being reflected from delamination areas inside and/or in the vicinity of the spot weld and separating the subset from a remainder of the responses; measuring an attenuation factor for each of the remainder of the responses; recognizing a stick weld area and a weld nugget area using the measured attenuation factors; and presenting a two dimensional image of delamination, stick weld and weld nugget areas of the spot weld.