A green line heating forming technology for ultra-thick plate

To overcome the difficulties, such as pollution, low heating efficiency, and complex heating control, in ultra-thick plate forming, a new forming technology was put forward, named as resistance heating forming technology (RHF). Experiment and finite element analysis were conducted to investigate the practicability and the advantages of RHF. The difference in temperature field between RHF and traditional flame heating forming technology (FHF) was discussed in detail. Then, the forming mechanism of RHF was illustrated deeply. The results show that the high temperature zone of resistance heating is of Π shape compared to Λ shape in flame heating method, the nominal width increased by 47.2 %, and the area of heated zone increased by 34.7 %. These result a higher energy utility for RHF. Under the similar energy input, the angular deformation of RHF is bigger than that of FHF, the relative displacement increased by 41.6 %, the angular deformation increased by 20.8 %. Both the experiment and simulation results show that RHF is an attractive and practical technology for ultra-thick plate forming.