Project WelDX – data and quality standards for welding research data

25/09/2020

• Challenge
• Objectives
• Methods
• Partners

Scientific welding data covers a wide range of physical domains and timescales and are measured using various different sensors. Complex and highly specialized experimental setups at different welding institutes complicate the exchange of welding research data further. The project aims to simplify the exchange and quality assurance of scientific welding data by establishing a common open source file format.

The WelDX project aims to increase quality standards and accessibility of welding research data by establishing a suitable file format. In addition, inter-institutional cooperation in an associated advisory committee and consistent application of Open Science practices stand at the center of the project. BAM also aims to publish various sets of reference welding data during the project.

Based on existing file formats that have been established in other scientific fields, a file format with integrated quality standards specifically aimed at welding research data will be defined.
Popular and well documented open source tools from the scientific Python ecosystem will be used for a reference API implementation and various examples throughout the project.

Funding
This research is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany under project number 16QK12.

Amount of funding
500.000 Euro

Coordination
Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM)
Division Welding Technology

New open source file format for welding data

The WelDX research project aims to foster the exchange of scientific data inside the welding community by developing and establishing a new open source file format suitable for documentation of experimental welding data and upholding associated quality standards. In addition to fostering scientific collaboration inside the national and international welding community an associated advisory committee will be established to oversee the future development of the file format. The proposed file format will be developed with regards to current needs of the community regarding interoperability, data quality and performance and will be published under an appropriate open source license. By using the file format objectivity, comparability and reproducibility across different experimental setups can be improved.

API implementation

To make the file format accessible and easy to integrate into scientific workflows, a corresponding Python API will be developed throughout the project. The API will be based on established scientific open source libraries and will also be made available under open source licensing.

Contact

M.Sc. Cagtay Fabry, email: Cagtay.Fabry@bam.de, phone:+49 30 8104 4675
Dr. Andreas Pittner, email: Andreas.Pittner@bam.de, phone: +49 30 8104 3696
Dipl.-Ing. Volker Hirthammer, email: Volker.Hirthammer@bam.de, phone: +49 30 8104 4597