It has been well documented that plate forming is one of the most important processes in shipbuilding. In the most shipyards, the line heating method is primarily used for plate forming. Since the heating process is carried out for the curved plate and not for the flat plate, a curvature effect on the final deformation must be considered in deriving the simplified prediction models for deformation. This paper investigates the effect of curvature along the heating line on the deformation of the plate. First of all, results of numerical analysis are compared with these of a line-heating test, to justify the elasto-plastic analysis procedure for the present study, which shows good agreement. Then, the present numerical procedure is applied to flat and curved plate models, to investigate the curvature effect on the heat transfer characteristics and deformation by line heating.