We present an innovative real-time laser welding monitoring technique employing the correlation analysis of the plasma plume optical emission generated during the process. The plasma optical radiation emitted during Nd:YAG laser welding of S45C steel samples has detected with a Photodiode and analyzed under different process conditions. The discrete DC voltage difference, filter methods and wavelet transform has been used to decompose the optical signal into various discrete series of sequences over different frequency bands. Considering that wavelet analysis can decompose the optical signals, extract the characteristic information of the signals and define the defects location accurately, it can be used to implement process-control of laser welding.
