Deformation compensation of long thick-walled welded plates by elastic pre-bending method

The welding-induced longitudinal bending deformation is significant for long welded structures, which strongly affects the dimensional accuracy of assembled products. For thick-walled welded structures, the longitudinal bending deformation is difficult to precisely eliminate due to high stiffness of the structures, which leads to low manufacturing accuracy and efficiency. In this paper, an accurate and efficient method is proposed to compensate for the longitudinal bending deformation of long thick-walled welded plates based on the elastic pre-bending technique. A theoretical model is developed to quantitate the effect of elastic pre-bending displacement on the welding-induced longitudinal bending deformation. The theoretical results are compared with those obtained by finite element analysis, which verifies the effectiveness of the theoretical model. The optimal elastic pre-bending displacement is efficiently determined based on the theoretical model, and the longitudinal bending deformation of the welded plate is reduced to 0.27mm with the optimal pre-bending displacement. The proposed theoretical model may help improve the precision and efficiency of deformation control for long thick-walled welded structures.