Pre-stress laser bending is a new method for the plastic bending of high strength aluminium alloy panels with no damage and high precision.In order to control the bending deformation reasonably，the elastic-plastic deformation behavior of the forming aluminium alloy panels should be revealed.In this paper，the elastic-plastic deformation behavior of a being bent high strength aluminium alloy panel is investigated with the finite element simulation method along with the strain energy theory of elastic-plastic mechanics.It is shown that during the laser scanning process，the generated plastic strain energy is derived from the transformation of both the elastic strain energy induced by pre-load and the laser thermal energy.With the increase in the pre-load，the plastic strain energy increases exponentially.With the increase in the laser energy，the plastic strain energy increases linearly.The increase in the plastic strain energy mentioned above is mainly due to the greater conversion of elastic strain energy.Based on the analysis results，the regulation and verification for the elastic-plastic deformation of the forming high strength aluminium alloy panel are carried out，which indicates that the high efficient and high precision elastic-plastic deformation control of the high strength aluminium alloy curved integral panel is achieved.