2009 International Conference on Computer Technology and Development
Using Neural Network for predicting induction-heating paths in shipyard
Truong-Thinh Nguyen
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Chonnam National University
Kwangju, Korea
e-mail: truongthinhs@yahoo.com
Abstract—This paper presents the development of an artificial
neural network model for the prediction of heating-line
positions in induction heating process. This model helps
shipyard manufacturers determine the positions of induction
heating lines and their heating parameters to form a desired
shape of plate. The vertical displacements of plate have been
considered as the input parameters and the selected induction
heating lines as output parameters to develop the model. The
training patterns of neural network are obtained using an
analytical solution that predicts plate deformations in
induction heating process. The developed neural network
model is tested to show its feasibility to determine the heating
positions on the surface of a flat steel plate in the line heating
process for forming a desired shape.
Keywords- shipyard; Neural Network; induction heating; line
heating; forming plate
I. INTRODUCTION
The steel forming process in shipyard is considered as
an important stage with respect to productivity and precision
of curved plates. Two types of heat sources can be used in
the line heating process: oxyacetylene torch and electro-
magnetic induction. The thermo-mechanical forming using
an oxyacetylene torch is more versatile and less expensive,
but it depends exactly on the skill of experienced workers to
control the deformation to produce a curvature within an
allowable range. To control the deformation precisely
during the process, the heat flux from the source should be
easy to control. However, the heat flux from the
oxyacetylene mixed gas is not easy to control because of the
heat generation characteristics resulting from the reaction of
the gases. Meanwhile, because the dimension of hull needs
to be controlled more precisely for high-performance ships,
the oxyacetylene process may be limited in various
applications. An alternative heat source of electro-magnetic
induction has been suggested as substitute for the gas flame
heating for such applications. Compared with the heat
source of an oxyacetylene torch, the induction process has
the following advantages as the power and its distribution
are easier to control and reproduce. Besides the induction
system can be integrated with a robotic system for
automation.
Induction heating process is known to produce
controllable heat on a conductive workpiece. When the
induction heating process is applied in association with
automatic inductor-handling equipment and a heating line
generation algorithm, the productivity of the curved plate
978-0-7695-3892-1/09 $26.00 © 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCTD.2009.136
Young-Soo Yang
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Chonnam National University
Kwangju, Korea
e-mail: ysyang@chonnam.ac.kr
forming process is expected to improve greatly. This process
is an important production process that can be widely used to
produce various curved thick plate for ship industry.
However, we do not yet have enough strong tools not only to
determine the heating parameters including heating positions
to form a desired shape but to determine the deflections of
plate with the heating parameters. The previous studies did
not give any method for determining net of induction heating
flux. Furthermore, travel of the inductor over a workpiece
was not modeled in any previous studies for simulation of an
actual induction process. Therefore, the induction heating
process should be precisely modeled to evaluate its
feasibility in plate forming. In addition to this, most
importantly, to apply the process to the steel-plate forming,
the relation between positions of heating line and desired
shape of the plate should be necessarily known in advance.
In this study, with the simplified formula, an Artificial
Neural network (ANN) model is proposed to generate the
heating-line positions and the heating parameters from the
objective curved surface. ANNs are powerful tools that have
recently emerged for modeling complex real-world
problems. ANNs are composed of densely interconnected
adaptive simple processing elements, called artificial
neurons or units that are capable of executing massively
parallel computations for data processing and knowledge
representation. The advantage of the artificial neural
networks stems from the remarkable information processing
characteristics of the biological system such as nonlinearity,
high parallelism, fault and failure tolerance and learning.
The main purpose of artificial neural network which is
based on computing is to develop mathematical algorithms
that will enable artificial neural networks to learn by
mimicking information processing and knowledge
acquisition in the human brain.
Figure 1. Schematic model of induction heating process.
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 The training and testing procedures for the ANN are software of ABAQUS, which uses the heat flux obtained in
performed with the deformation data obtained by use of the the electromagnetic analysis as the heat input into the plate.
simplified formula with the heating positions and The area reaching the critical temperature during the
parameters. The developed ANN model with an input of the induction heating process is defined as the plastic region
desired shape of a plate predicts the induction heating which has the eigenstrains.
positions and the heating parameters. The deformed shape
from an experiment with the predicted results of the model is B. Heat flow and thermal deformation analyses
then compared with the desired shape to validate usefulness To analyze the thermal deformation of a steel plate in
and effectiveness of the proposed method in induction the induction heating process, a transient heat flow analysis
heating process. is required first. By using the heat flux obtained in the
electro-magnetic analysis as the heat-flux input onto the
II. HEAT FLOW ANALYSIS IN INDUCTION steel plate, the heat flow analysis is conducted with a
HEATING PROCESS commercial FEM package program of Msc.MARC. The
magnitude of heat input being distributed around the
A. Analysis of heat flux distribution inductor depends on the distance from the current position
An alternating voltage applied to induction coil results of the inductor.
in an alternating current in the coil circuit. Alternating coil Using statistical analysis on the deformation obtained by
current will produce in its surrounding a time-variable the FEM analysis, the simplified formula to predict the
magnetic field that has the same frequency as the coil angular distortion for a given set of heating parameters can
current. This magnetic field induces eddy current in the steel be expressed as follows.
plate located near the coil. These induced currents have 1 1
θ = −5.4 × 10 −3 + 120.7( 0.795 2.033 ) − 135301.7( 0.795 2.033 ) 2 (1)
same frequency as the coil current, whereas, their direction v t v t
is opposite to coil current. The induced current generates
electric-resistance heat by the Joule effect in the plate as
shown in Fig.1 [1], and this can be used to bend the plate.
The basic electromagnetic phenomena of induction heating
are quite well discussed at several textbooks. In the
modeling of the induction heating of a steel plate, the
electromagnetic phenomenon should be close examined.
Meanwhile, the magnetic properties change with the
temperature. Therefore, the mathematical model for
induction heating normally involves three main physical
phenomena related to electromagnetism, heat transfer and (a)
solid mechanics [2-3]. That is to say, the electromagnetic
phenomenon is coupled with the thermal problem of the
plate. In this study, the model of the coupled problem is first
developed to obtain the heat flux distribution over a steel
plate during the induction heating. The temperature gradient
field changes since the sources moves in the induction
heating process. For the simplification of the transient heat
flow problem, with the assumption that moving speed of the
inductor is much faster than that of heat conduction, the
quasi-stationary state is adopted for the process. The (b)
governing equations for electromagnetic field and heat flow
Figure 2. Grid of points measuring displacements as input (a) and Values
problems are formulated for the FEM to implement to a of input hi displacements of grid points of plate (b).
FORTRAN program. In the analyses, iterations are carried
out at each step with updated material properties until the
convergence limit by comparing the temperature ne
n
distributions of subsequent iteration steps. The comparisons Li
finally produce a heat flux at each node from the inductor.
The heat flux obtained is then utilized as the heat input onto
the plate in the following transient heat flow analysis.
The deformations of plate are dominated by the Li ...
...
distributions of plastic strains in induction heating. It is ne -3
3n 2n
assumed that plastic strains, driving force to make angular -5 ne
Li
distortion and transverse shrinkage, are produced in a
critical heating region. Transient temperature distribution in
the steel plate during induction heating is obtained by a
Figure 3. Schematic of induction heating paths
numerical analysis of the process with a commercial

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 TABLE I. OUTPUT VARIABLES FOR AN OUTPUT LINE
Parameter Value Meaning
Parameter 1 0 Induction heat
1 No induction heat
Parameter 2 0 Back surface
1 Front surface
0 0 1st velocity
Parameter 3 +
0 1 2nd velocity
Parameter 4 1 0 3rd velocity
1 1 4th velocity
TABLE II. ENCODED VELOCITY
High bit Low bit Velocity(m/s)
1 1 20
1 0 15
0 1 10
0 0 5 equivalent 5, 10, 15, 20 (m/s)).
III. MODELING FOR PREDICTING INDUCTION
HEATING PATHS USING NEURAL NETWORK
ANNs are computational models, which replicate the
function of a biological network, composed of neurons and
are used to solve complex functions in various applications.
ANNs consist of simple synchronous processing elements
that are inspired by the biological nerve systems. The
general network in this study has 3 or 4 layers, which are
input, output, and 1 or 2 hidden layers. The basic units in
ANN are neurons, which are connected to each other by
links known as synapses. Associated with each synapse,
there exists a weight factor. One of the most popular
training algorithms is the back-propagation algorithm. The
hidden layers of neurons receive the inputs from the
previous layer and convert them to an activation value that
can be passed on as input to the neurons in the next layer.
The input-layer neurons do not perform any computation,
they merely copy the input values and associate them with
weights, feeding the neurons in the hidden layer.
In the induction heating process, the deformed shape of
plate is changed due to the number and position of induction
heating line. In the proposed model, ANN is used to solve
the problem selecting the positions of induction heating path
with heated surfaces, and velocities. The network is trained
for positions of induction heating line and deformation of
plate after heated. Initial shape is a square plate, which is
divided into n2 points to get displacements (deflections)
with equal distance from a point to other on the planar area
as shown in Fig.2(a). The point i’s vertical displacement of
gridded plate along z-axis as shown in Fig.2(b) is hi.
Therefore, each input vector has n2 units representing
deformed plate’s shape expressed as a pattern on a (nxn)
grid of displacement’s point.
The plate’s angular distortion in induction heating
process is function of some parameter as heating speed,
plate thickness as (1). As values of output units, induction
heating paths are needed to generate the deformed plate.
The output layer is recognized by parameters as number of
induction paths, heated surfaces, and velocities. A heating
path includes heated line (heat or no heat) with velocity of
inductors, and heated surface (front or back) of path. The
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paths are indexed shown in Fig. 3, and they are able to be
horizontal lines, vertical lines, or diagonal lines along which
the inductor moves. Values of output layer are set to be
binary. Each induction heating line is predicted with 4
parameters as shown in Table I. Values of output layer can
be binary, 1 or 0. Each induction heating line is predicted
with 4 parameters as:
- Parameter 1: Active Path, if value is 1, there is the
heat at induction heating line and one is 0 then no heat at
line.
- Parameter 2: Surface parameter, if value is 1 then line
heating in front surface and 0 is heated back surface.
- Parameters 3 and 4: Velocity, 2 remaining values used
for a path showing the 4 inductor velocities: they encode 4
values of velocity (Example: encoding 00, 01, 10, 11 are
In Fig. 3, there are (3n-5) induction heating paths,
which can be generated on plate. Therefore, there are (3n-5)
paths using for predicting in this application. Each path
includes 4 parameters as above shown in Table I and there
are 4(3n-5) components in output layer. Therefore, there are
(3n-5) categories of the output vector, each representing
several groups of induction heating lines. Each path number
matches position of induction heating line. When first
parameter of group i (ith induction heating path) is 0, it is
meaning no induction heating path at the line i and therefore
velocity, and heat surface are also 0.
Because the output value for each simulation’s case must
be either 1 or 0, therefore calculated value at output unit after
through network is compared with threshold like:
⎧ ⎛ h2 ⎞
⎪ 1 if f ⎜ ∑ zi wik ⎟ ≥ 0.5
⎪ ⎝ i =0 ⎠ (2)
yj = ⎨
⎪0 if f ⎛ z w ⎞ < 0.5
h2
⎪ ⎜ ∑ i ik ⎟
⎩ ⎝ i =0 ⎠
In the following, modeling for predicting induction
heating paths with the back-propagation network (BPN) will
be discussed. The units of input layer are used to receive the
(n2) displacement values. The units of output layer are used
to send out the active induction heat enclosed with heating
surface, and velocity. By trial, the mean squared error
(MSE) values are calculated to get minimum error as well as
stability.
One of the most important works in ANN studies is to
determine the optimal network architecture which is related
to the number of hidden layers and neurons in it. ANN
structure has significant effects on the predicted results.
However, the optimal number of hidden layers and the
optimal number of neurons in each layer are dependent on
specific case and there is no straightforward method for
determination of them. Generally, the trial and error
approach is used. Number of hidden layers with specific
models depends on number of training patterns and
accuracy of classification expected. And theoretical results
show that one hidden layer is sufficient for back-
propagation algorithm to map any input to each output to an
arbitrary degree of accuracy.

(a)
1000
(b)
Figure 4. Schematics of (a) grid nodes for ANN model and (b) induction
heating paths for ANN model
In this case, an ANN is formulated with (n2) units, which
represent all vertical displacements of the plate established as
input variables, and the estimated several line among (3n-5)
induction heating lines as output variables. The network’s
input units are connected to output layer through 2 hidden
layers with p1 units and p2 units. In database of training, the
values of input are continuous and values of output are
binary. An important factor in ANN model is the type of
transfer functions. A sigmoid activation function is used as
the activation function for different layers because of its
better prediction performance than other transfer functions.
Figure 5. Input data as desired deformed plate in a specific case
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Figure 6. Induction heating lines on front surface (left) and back surface
(right) in experiment.
Deflection (mm)
Figure 7. Vertical displacements of induction heated plate.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
A program processing ANN is written in Fortran using
the data from the simplified formula of (1) to get values of
weights of different layers. The model of neural networks,
which evaluated the relation between objective plate shapes
and induction-line positions were composed. Purpose of
model is to solve the problem determining the number of
induction lines with all its parameters. Candidate heating
paths were obtained by prediction based on ANN.
Some specific cases were evaluated with the predicted
results of ANN comparing with the desired results for initial
plate’s dimension 1000x1000x20 mm3. Distance between 2
points of grid for calculating displacements was 100 mm.
Architecture of ANN was formulated with 121 input units,
which represent vertical displacement of the plate established
as input variables shown in Fig.4(a), and the estimated paths
of induction heating line among 28 groups (112 units)
established as output variables shown in Fig.4(b). The
velocity values of output data were encoded as shown in
Table II.
After training with several times, it can be observed that
increasing the number of neurons used in the hidden layers
did not improve the performance of network. It was found
that single hidden layers can provided better convergence in
the modeling of predicting paths than 2 hidden layers. The
highest accuracy for predicting induction heating was
obtained at a network, which has 1 hidden layer with 160
neurons. It was found that increase of the number of neurons
in the hidden layer does not ensure the decrease of the
average training process’s error or increase accuracy. Based
on this analysis, the optimal architecture of the ANN was
constructed as 121-160-112 presenting the number of
inputs, neurons in hidden layers, and output, respectively.
Training data set with 1200 patterns as database was
selected random based on relationship between the
deformed shapes of plate and positions of induction heating
line as well as their velocities and heated surface. The
vertical displacements at the points on the plate were
calculated as input values according to the simple formula
(1).
In this case, training a neural network involves 10,000
iterations (also known as epochs). Database randomized is
used to determine the weight and biased values. The
learning rate was set at 0.2 and momentum coefficient at
0.8. Training was performed until the iteration number of
10,000 times and error 0.001 was reached. At the beginning
of training, ANN initializes network weights with a set of
small random values according to Nguyen-Widrow
initialization [4]. During each epoch, the network received a
sequence training pairs. Then, the system calculated a sum
squared error between the desired outputs and the network’s
actual outputs. It used the gradient of the sum squared error
(with respect to weights) to adapt the network weights so
that the error measure is smaller in next epochs. The
accuracy of the developed model depends on these weights.
Training terminates when the sum squared error is below a
specified tolerance limit, optimum weights are reached, the
weights and biased values encode the network’s state of
knowledge.
After training, a BPN is simulated by using only the feed-
forward phase of the trained algorithm. As a specific case,
from desired surface, displacements of points were given as
shown in Fig.5. The values of them were saved at input
vector for simulating ANN. Next, the induction heating
experiments on the AH32 plate with the predicted induction
heating paths and parameters are conducted to evaluate the
proposed ANN model. This induction heating process is
subdivided into 2 sub-processes as front surface and back
surface. There are 2 parallel induction lines in front surface
of plate and 3 parallel lines in back surface as shown Fig.6.
The initial shape of plate is planar, after the plate was heated
along 5 predicted lines. The vertical displacement values of
plate at points were measured by a Coordinate Measuring
Machine (CMM). The desired(target) and experimental
results for vertical displacements when induction heating
process was performed on flat plate 20 mm thickness are
shown in Fig.7, it shows vertical deflection of plate y = -500,
-300, -100, and 300 (mm) for simulating the specific case. In
the graphs, the experimental results are almost near the
desired results. From the graphs in Fig. 19, it is obvious that,
although there are some errors between desired and
experimental displacement values, the shape of predicted
plate is very similar to the desired one. The differences
between the desired and experimental values may be
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attributed to the following reasons: first, due to number of
training data and random distributions are not good for
predicting parameters in this case. To improve the problem,
an ANN model is trained with lager number of data and
patterns are chosen randomly with equilateral distributions as
well as combine of more induction heating line than 10.
Secondly, 4 chosen velocities have large different levels,
therefore, they can affect on errors of deformed plate. To
reduce the errors, number of bits to encode velocity used
should be more than 2 bits or differences between 2
velocities should be smaller. The improvements will bring
better results for predictions of induction heating paths.
Nevertheless, the present result shows that the developed
model can help to predict the induction heating paths from
analytical displacements, and it is indeed a powerful tool to
established relationships between vertical displacements and
induction heating paths.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The main conclusions from this study are summarized
as follows.
- A simplified formula for easily simulating plate
deformations in induction heating process has been
developed with a series of FEM analyses of the thermo-
mechanical behavior. Fairly good agreement between the
simulating and experimental results has been achieved.
- An ANN model capable of predicting line-heating
paths with the necessary heating parameters is developed
with the back-propagation algorithm. The feasibility study
proved the model as a predictive tool for determining heating
paths from object shapes can produce the actual shapes of
plates in induction heating process.
- The developed model can effectively reduce the time
required to solve the problem of matching deformation of
plate with induction heating line positions and the problem
of predicting induction heating paths.
- The algorithm of the ANN obtained from this study,
which is the heating line generation algorithm on how and
where to heat a workpiece, can be suitably and reliably
applied to the induction heating process with larger plate and
more paths.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This study was financially supported by Chonnam National
University, 2009.
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