Spot welding is a representative process in automotive welding and the application of intelligent systems is accelerating. In particular, in the case of welding electrode management, the timing of electrode wear and dressing was determined by continuous spot welding evaluation, however there is concerned that errors in welding equipment or processes may work in a complex manner. In this study, a dynamic resistance waveform sensing and image measurement system that greatly affects the nugget formation, which is important to the quality of spot welding, was fabricated and used. Based on the experimental data of the galvanized steel sheet, an electrode life prediction algorithm for electrode wear was derived through CNN(Convolutional Neural Network) model of machine learning training.

Chromium nitride (CrN) samples with two different layer structures (multilayer and single layer) were coated on bipolar plates of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) using the reactive sputtering method. The effects with respect to layer structure on corrosion resistance and overall cell performance were investigated. A continuous and thin chromium nitride layer (Cr0.48 N0.52) was formed on the surface of the SUS 316L when the nitrogen flow rate was 10 sccm. The electrochemical stability of the coated layers was examined using the potentiodynamic and potentiostatic methods in the simulated corrosive circumstances of the PEMFC under 80˚C. Interfacial contact resistance (ICR) between the CrN coated sample and the gas diffusion layer was measured by using Wang's method. A single cell performance test was also conducted. The test results showed that CrN coated SUS316L with multilayer structure had excellent corrosion resistance compared to single layer structures and single cell performance results with 25 cm2 in effective area also showed the same tendency. The difference of the electrochemical properties between the single and multilayer samples was attributed to the Cr interlayer layer, which improved the corrosion resistance. Because the coating layer was damaged by pinholes, the Cr layer prevented the penetration of corrosive media into the substrate. Therefore, the CrN with a multilayer structure is an effective coating method to increase the corrosion resistance and to decrease the ICR for metallic bipolar plates in PEMFC.