Pressure vessels are widely used in petroleum, chemical industry, boilers and other industrial sectors, is an important national economic production of special equipment. According to the State Quality and Technical Supervision statistics, the year in 2003, when asked, there were all kinds of pressure vessels, gas cylinder explosion in 144, the direct economic loss reached 14.8633 million yuan. Therefore, to improve the quality of its welding and mechanical automation level of the pressure vessel for the welding industry as a whole are of great significance.
   Pressure vessel is to withstand the pressure of the equipment inside and outside, with a variety of structural forms, the basic composition of the shell, head, flange, pipe, bearings, etc., and these parts are assembled through welding as a whole. Therefore, pressure vessel welding process is the core of the manufacturing process. Pressure vessel joints most commonly seen form of butt joints, corner joints and lap joints, the weld forms a butt weld, fillet weld and weld combination of three. At present, the domestic petrochemical industry, extensive use of large vertical tank, the main welding are used in varying degrees of automatic welding technology.
   Bottom of the tank, the tank wall and tank wall circumferential weld seam under the node Feet mainly automatic submerged welding, longitudinal welding tank wall mainly vertical welding technology. Early 70s in the 20th century began to study abroad for all position automatic welding technology sphere, the U.S., Japan and other industrialized countries in the sphere all position automatic welding flux cored wire have applied since arc welding and MIG welding and other methods. Century China was plus 80 for the tank on the MIG welding in all position welding automatic pilot study conducted, but could not reach the level of practical application. Through the introduction and development of research, our country is applying pressure vessel tank workers have come to the automatic welding direction 1415J. Automatic welding of large spherical tank transverse joint research, has been successfully applied to the thickness of 30mm or more floating roof tank welding the transverse joints. Universal Automatic arc welding machine development, in the pressure vessel industry, such as welding can be used in girth. For the 50 000 m3 of vertical storage tanks, using CO, air protection welding and submerged arc welding machine combination. To reduce production costs and improve labor efficiency, with a good prospect.
   Welding process has become a modern industrial production as an important metal working process, directly restricts the development of various other industries. Danish scholar Jens Klastrup Kristensen welding process, the system summarizes the factors that affect the field of welding automation technology, materials science, environment, non-destructive testing, mechanical and corrosion, fracture mechanics and many other subjects. The welding automatic welding in the field as an important branch, turn, restricts the welding process. For the pressure vessel, the welding automation technology can be summarized as the hardware elements and software elements.
   The main factors that hardware automatic welding equipment, pressure vessels and methods; software factors mainly referring to computer technology, electronics, automatic control technology and information technology into the field of pressure vessel formed by welding welding control technology, artificial intelligence and expert systems.
    At present, the seam tracking system, artificial neural networks and expert systems has been applied to welding pressure vessels, welding automation process, has become a pressure vessel welding automation technology is an important direction. Of welding process parameters and test sensing methods and sensors, especially those who directly or indirectly reflect the dynamic quality of the welding process state variable detection sensor. Which, CCD visual seam tracking system has great application prospect.
    Generally speaking, pressure vessel welding automation technologies related to multi-discipline comprehensive utilization. With the pressure vessel Xin Xing materials development and application of the comprehensive mechanical properties of Zhubutigao, need further development of new welding Equipment and process methods Chongfen the help of Qi Ta subjects such as electronic information technology, computer technology and Zidongkongzhi Realize welding process control technology, etc. system of intelligent, flexible welding systems and welding production system integration. So that the level of pressure vessel welding automation to a new level.