Abstract
To form curved surface, in-plane strain is introduced into a plate by using several methods such as line heating, press working and laser heating in shipbuilding and sheet metal working in forming nose shape for the shinkan-sen. Laser forming could be a potential useful method for sheet metal forming as well as press working.
Curved surface is classified based on its features of primary curvature radius into two typical shapes, so called bowl and saddle. So, when we research some technique to form curved surface, at least two types of bowl and saddle shapes should be investigated. For the bowl shape, some researchers reported that initial curvature radius has no effect on the in-plane strain induced by laser heating.
In this report, the effect of initial curvature on the in-plane strain induced by laser heating is investigated for the saddle shape. As a result, shrinkage distributions caused by in-plane strain were varied with different initial curvatures. In this phenomenon, bending moment acts a key role in both heating and cooling processes.
