“IHIMU- a” A Fully Automated Steel Plate Bending System for Shipbuilding

摘要

For more than half a century, line heating has been used in shipbuilding as a method of forming curved shell plate. This technique relies completely on the experience, instincts and know-how of the worker involved.In 1997, in order to automate this technique, “IHI- a” was developed, the world’s first automatic processing system for bending steel plate. Since then, the IHI- a system has been used for actual ships under construction while being continuously improved. A new version of the system has now been successfully developed that can automatically handle the entire process, including the additional heating used for finishing the plates. This paper details the latest IHIMU- a system.