Study on Plate Forming Using the Line Heating Process of Multiple-torch

Abstract

With increasing competition in the world shipbuilding market, manual and experiential technique patterns of line heating process could not meet the requirements of modern shipbuilding in product speed and quality. In recent years, the improvement of productivity for line-heating process is one of the goals in the shipbuilding industry, which means an accurate prediction model is very important. In this study, a finite element analysis (FEA) model for the line-heating process was established and experiments were conducted to prove the validity of the model. The final numerical results are in good agreement with experiment results. Based on the FEA model, the feasibility of the multiple-torch process is verified. The multiple-torch process could greatly save processing time, which is entirely feasible in the specific automation implementation. Finally, the effect of heat line spacing is analyzed, which could provide important information for the line-heating process design. The proposed method presents a valuable reference for the study of the similar thermal process.