Published on HowNet. If the duplicate check has any influence, I suggest you publish it. It's not too late to wait until the defense is over. It is suggested that publications that cannot be published on HowNet, or publications that are published slowly on HowNet, will have a certain impact if small papers are published on HowNet before big papers, but the impact will not be too great.
The major of ship intelligent welding technology mainly studies courses such as metal materia