Ship-hull plate forming of saddle shape by geometrical approach

In shipbuilding, plate forming is one of the basic manufacturing processes before welding and assembly procedure. It has been practically carried out by line heating method by flame. Since the process depends upon skilled worker's experience, there could be lots of problems in product quality, productivity, working environment and so on. Hence, it is necessary to develop systematic methods for automatic plate forming. And it should provide users with information about where and how much to heat on the plate from the given geometric data. In this study, an inverse solution to three-dimensional flame forming was proposed. Geometric data such as bending angles and shrinkages were firstly achieved by simple geometrical approach. Then they were converted to forming parameters through the database map which represents the relationship between geometrical parameters and forming parameters. Lastly, experiments of the plate forming were performed for algorithm validation. The results of the formed shape were similar to the saddle shape desired.