The Great Way Forward - Leaping to New Heights丨Titanium is not simple

Hot-rolled titanium strip coils with a width of 2040mm, a new domestic record; high performance corrosion-resistant titanium welded tubes become a key component of "Hualong No.1"; high strength and high toughness TC18 titanium alloy, to help the development of domestic aircraft Kunlong AG600 ...... After more than 10 years The titanium processing has been built from titanium sponge, titanium ingots, titanium strip coil to titanium welded tube industry chain, titanium strip coil, titanium welded tube production and sales ranked first in the country, titanium finishing series products, repeatedly fill the gaps in the country, break foreign monopoly, applied to many "national heavy weapon".

　　"Boom ......"

　　May 28, Hunan Xiangtou Jintian Technology Group (hereinafter referred to as "Xiangtou Jintian") under the Jintian Titanium cold-rolled titanium strip coil manufacturing workshop, a cold-rolled titanium strip coil special twenty-axis rolling mill is working steadily.

　　Inside the mill, a roll of dark silver titanium strip is being rolled into 0.5 mm gauge. Soon, this roll of high-quality titanium strip will become a key component in aircraft, ships and computer and communication electronics.

　　Titanium is an important strategic metal with properties such as light weight, strength and corrosion resistance, and can be used in extremely complex working environments such as space and sea. The processing and development capability of titanium and titanium alloys has become one of the important criteria for measuring the advancement of a country in the fields of aerospace, navigation, nuclear power, deep sea exploration and other scientific and technological fields. Due to the complex titanium smelting process and the difficulty of processing, only four countries in the world, namely China, Russia, the United States and Japan, have complete industrial production technology for titanium.

　　For more than ten years, Xiangtou Jintian has been focusing on titanium finishing, producing titanium strip coils, titanium welded tubes, titanium rods and other series of products, which have repeatedly filled the gaps in China and broken foreign monopolies, and have been applied to many "national important weapons", making up for Hunan's shortcomings in the strategic emerging materials industry and solving a series of technical problems in China's titanium industry.

　　1、The widest hot rolled titanium strip coil in China, participate in the "deep sea crawling robot" project

　　On January 9 this year, when it was cold and dreary outdoors, a remarkable product was slowly rolled out of the 2250 hot rolling line of Lian Steel, a subsidiary of Hunan Iron and Steel Group, gathering many enthusiastic eyes.

　　"It's done!" A roar of approval rang out from the scene.

　　After three months of hard work, Jintian Titanium and Lian Steel have joined forces to successfully prepare an ultra-wide, thin-spec, large-roll weight hot-rolled titanium strip coil with a width of 2040 mm and a roll weight of 10.7 tonnes, creating the widest hot-rolled titanium strip coil history in China.

　　"The product refreshed our own record set, further broadening the Golden Sky Titanium hot-rolled coil category specifications." Liu Zhengqiao, director of the technical department of Jintian Titanium, told reporters that the wider the titanium strip coil, the wider and more valuable the scenario of direct application, and also avoids the cost increase and quality risk brought by sputtering and welding.

　　Titanium rolling, especially to roll wide and thin, is not easy.

May 28, Hunan Xiangtou Jintian Titanium Metal Co., Ltd. rolled titanium strip coils neatly yarded. Hunan Daily full media reporter Tong Di photo

　　Liu Zhengqiao introduced, titanium has a strong, small thermal conductivity, not easy to deformation and other characteristics, as a molding material, these are the advantages; but in the rolling process, that is the "disadvantages".

　　Because of the difficulty of deformation, easy to fracture, titanium rolling of raw materials and rolling temperature, strength, humidity and other parameters of the requirements are particularly delicate. And the wider or thinner the roll, the higher the likelihood of defects.

　　"This time the temperature is low, the next time the strength is not enough, it requires repeated simulation tests and only hard work." Liu Zhengqiao describes, "Titanium is particularly active at high temperatures again, just like a wild horse, the taming process is extraordinarily difficult."

　　One time when rolling, a crack defect appeared on the coil surface of the titanium strip, Liu Zhengqiao and his team studied for several days but could not find the cause.

　　There were no shortcuts in the technical attack. The entire team collected several years' worth of data from the rolling line and pored over it for months, eliminating dozens of possibilities before arriving at a few suspicious conclusions. Then it took another month or so of repeated simulations on the computer to finally eliminate the cracks.

　　How strong is the performance of the "tamed" quality titanium strip coil? Kong Cellophane, assistant general manager of Golden Sky Titanium, said, "It is widely used in ships, submarines, deep-sea probes and so on, such as making shells and some key parts of the structural parts."

　　In recent years, Jintian Titanium has participated in the research and development of major national science and technology projects such as the "deep sea crawling robot", mainly responsible for the main structure and electronic components of the cabin production.

　　Jiang Biao, the project leader, said the deep-sea crawler robot is designed to reach depths of 1,000 to 1,500 metres. He said, "Titanium is extremely resistant to corrosion, while being strong and light, it is particularly suitable for application in the ocean, hence titanium's reputation as a 'marine metal' as well."

　　2, successfully applied to the "Hualong One", rewrite the global titanium welded pipe industry pattern

　　In November 2020, the first set of high performance titanium welded tubes for the condenser of "Hualong One" was produced by Jintian New Material, a subsidiary of Xiangtou Jintian. "This is an important part of the localization and independentization of key nuclear power equipment materials, and is a significant milestone in the process of nuclear power localization." Nicco Ye Qiqi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and an expert in nuclear reactor and nuclear power engineering, praised on the spot.

　　This inconspicuous welded pipe should not be underestimated.

　　Li Junzhao, deputy manager of the technical department of Jintian New Material, introduced that China's nuclear power plants are basically built by the sea, and titanium welded tubes in nuclear power engineering are mainly used to load seawater and circulate back and forth in nuclear power units to cool down the nuclear power units. "1 nuclear power unit, dense with more than 100,000 titanium welded tubes, otherwise how is the key equipment?"

　　"Hualong One" is a major landmark in the development of nuclear power innovation in China, for which the titanium welded tubes, never allow any defects, and require a service life of more than 30 years.

On May 28, the production line of Hunan Xiangtou Jintian Titanium Metal Co. Hunan Daily full media reporter Tong Di photo

　　It is not difficult to imagine how difficult it was to develop this tube.

　　The titanium welded pipe used in "Hualong No. 1" is about 18 meters long, 2.1 cm in diameter, about the size of a mineral water bottle cap, and only 0.5 mm thick. The corrosive nature of seawater, coupled with the short diameter and thin thickness, makes the welding and forming and heat treatment processes extremely demanding.

　　Li Junzhao said that the indicators for nuclear-grade titanium welded tubes are more than one times stricter than conventional titanium welded tubes. At the same time, as with rolling titanium strip coils, any defects in the titanium welded pipe, whether it is incorrect welding parameters, high welding current, or raw materials with inclusions, or problems with the rolling process, need to be fully investigated.

　　"We were divided into three groups, Rolling and Forming, Welding and Testing, and Materials and Heat Transfer Research, to collaborate on the problem. Very often, the three groups had to meet together to study and then verify one by one, repeatedly adjusting parameters and rolls before finding a solution to the problem." Li Junzhao recalls.

　　After more than 1,000 days and nights of research, Jintian New Material in 2019 to create a high-performance corrosion-resistant titanium welded pipe in line with the "Hualong One" condenser standards, breaking the foreign technical monopoly and market blockade of titanium welded pipe for nuclear power condenser, but also gradually realized the export, rewriting the global industrial pattern of titanium welded pipe.

　　3、8 years to gnaw the "hard bone", to help the development of domestic large aircraft

　　May 31, by China's independent development of large fire fighting / water rescue amphibious aircraft Kunlong AG600 all-state new configuration fire fighting aircraft, in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, the first successful flight.

　　At the scene, the Kunlong AG600 taxiing from Zhuhai Jinwan Airport, has completed equal speed climb, level flight deceleration, loose-lever flight, simulated approach and other test flight tasks, in the air after 20 minutes of flight landed safely, the operation of all systems stable.

　　The landing gear of this big guy is made of TC18 titanium alloy, which was developed by Jintian Titanium Industry.

　　The Kunlong AG600 is one of the "three brothers" of China's large aircraft. With a maximum take-off weight of 60 tonnes and a maximum water capacity of 12 tonnes, it fills the gap of a large domestic aerial fire-fighting aircraft.

　　You can imagine how much pressure the landing gear will be under when this aircraft lands.

　　In 2011, Golden Sky Titanium, a subsidiary of Xiangtou Jintian, took on this hard "bone".

　　How hard is this "bone"? One of the less obvious "black spot" problem, let the R & D team "headache" for nearly a year.

High-performance titanium welded pipes in the production workshop of Xiangtou Jintian New Materials Co. Photo by Li Bobin

　　"Black spots are caused by uneven material organization or component segregation. The presence of black spots can easily lead to micro cracks in the product and lay the hidden danger of fracture." Yang Sheng, general manager of Xiangtou Jintian and then chief expert of Jintian Titanium Industry, told reporters.

　　In order to optimize the forging process, the research team worked for a long time in the workshop where the temperature exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, keeping an eye on every detail and parameter of the forging process, staying for a whole day; every time they went to the partner to communicate details, the team went straight to the forging workshop, the first time to improve the newly emerged problems.

　　Finally, after 8 years of "fierce battle", the team developed a high strength and high toughness TC18 titanium alloy, which met the requirements of Kunlong AG600, allowing Xiangtou Jintian to stand firm in the aerospace field.

　　At present, Xiangtou Jintian has strong technical strength in high-performance titanium alloy rods for aircraft engine blades, aircraft frames and aerospace components, and has become one of the top three suppliers of high-end titanium alloy materials for aviation in China.

　　"Xiangtou Jintian has formed a complete titanium industry chain from materials to components to equipment, and will continue to carry out research and development of high-end titanium materials for the aerospace and nuclear power industries in the future while making more exploration in the fields of aerospace engines, deep-sea equipment and livelihoods such as medical, computer and communication electronics to better serve the country and society." Peng Dan, vice chairman of Xiangtou Jintian, told reporters that the trend of titanium processing is becoming more and more alloyed and ultra-thin, and the application scenarios of titanium will continue to expand.

　　Youth Watch

　　Forging yourself like titanium

　　Liu Zhengqiao (Head of Titanium Technology Department, Golden Sky)

　　As a rare metal, titanium has the advantages of high hardness and high corrosion resistance. From aircraft, ships, nuclear power and other scientific and technological fields, to bicycles, badminton rackets, eyeglass frames and other daily use fields, titanium is a top material that can go up and down the world and can also be used in the hands, and is known as the "metal of the future".

　　I am lucky to have become a titanium researcher after graduating from university; I have been in the industry for more than ten years, and have participated in and witnessed the growth and rise of Hunan's high-end titanium industry, which is a great honour.

　　In these ten years, what makes me most proud and unforgettable is the determination of Hunan titanium people to devote themselves to the development of high-end titanium materials, and their unwavering will to take the road of innovation.

　　Many people do not know that when titanium processing in Hunan started in 2007, there was not even a production line. We boldly pioneered the "titanium-steel combination" model and rolled the first large-rolled wide hot-rolled titanium strip coils in China on Lian Steel's rolling mill, rewriting history.

　　Tang Renbo, a titanium metal researcher, returned to Hunan after retirement. As a technical leader, Tang not only led the development of technology, but also trained a large number of technical backbone. Now in his 80s, he is still on the front line guiding research work.

　　When participating in the development of the landing gear of the Kunlong AG600 aircraft, in order to solve the problem of "black spots" on TC18 titanium alloy, which had plagued the industry for many years, the technical team of Jintian Titanium Industry continuously optimised the process and took more than 270 days to overcome the problem.

　　......

　　It is very touching, around the predecessors, colleagues devoted to the research of titanium processing, night and day, forgetting the time and themselves; very proud, they are also a part of Hunan titanium people, involved in many fill the historical gaps in the research, gain a sense of full.

　　There is no end to scientific research. My ideal is to forge myself like titanium, to withstand all kinds of harsh tests, and to make my own contribution to the cause of titanium in China.

*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***