During ship construction, plate forming technology significantly affects construction accuracy and production efficiency. In this paper, AH36 steel plate with 18mm thickness was examined and induction heating bending experiment was carried out while transient temperature was measured. 3D scanner was used to obtain the point cloud data of examined plate, and the out-of-plane bending deformation of examined plate was observed. Then, induction heating bending was computed by thermal-elastic-plastic finite element analysis. The computed results of temperature and out-of-plane bending deformation were in good agreement with the measured data, which the accuracy of computational analysis was confirmed. With lots of FE analysis, the mathematical relationship between the moving velocity of heat source and the transverse bending angle was established. For the single curvature plate, the inner polyline method and the outer polyline method were both proposed to fit the bending shape of objective plate, and the corresponding process parameters such as the position of heating line and the moving speed of heat source were proposed for the thermal-elastic-plastic FE analysis. The calculation results show that the out-of-plane bending deformation obtained by the two methods are consistent with the bending shape of objective curvature plate, which demonstrates the feasibility of applying proposed methods for practical engineering, and provides a theoretical basis for plate bending in shipyard.