Abstract
In shipyard, plate forming is widely used to form the ship hull plate in various shapes. Line heating method by using a flame torch is one of the major shipbuilding processes carried out by skilled workers. Since the forming characteristics depend upon their experiences in manual forming, there are much variations between products and difficulties in communication between engineers and workers. Hence, it needs to develop an automatic forming system which can not only reduce the working time and rework costs but also improve the working environment and hull forming productivity. One of the final goals of plate forming automation is to form a target shape from the initial plate automatically. For automated plate forming, it is required to determine where and how to heat on the plate. To realize this procedure, the inverse problem should be first solved and the effect of curvature shape formed at the heating path should be investigated. In this study, the inverse problem was solved by geometrical approach using the relationship between bending angle and radius of curvature of the curved shape. In addition, experiments of two-dimensional plate forming were performed with the distance-based method considering the curved bending with curvature. The result of the formed shape agreed considerably well with the target shape.
