초록
Induction bending via high-frequency heating is widely used for manufacturing pipe and section steel bends. It allows productivity improvement, unit cost reduction, delivery time compliance, and good mechanical properties. The recent increase in high-end vessels and offshore plants has raised the demand for high-frequency bending, which should improve the product quality and reduce the costs by simplifying the fabrication process; therefore, the characteristics and performance of this technique must be studied and proper design technology is required. During hot pipe bending via induction heating, the outward wall thickness of the pipe is thinned due to tensile stress and this thickness reduction cannot exceed 12.5%. This study focused on pipe bends with a bending curvature of 5D and their optimization design; in particular, the conditions that can both improve the productivity of the high-frequency bending process and keep the maximum thickness reduction below 12.5% were determined.
