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Application status of metal materials for military equipment
2024-09-07 10:08:56
The new materials industry is a strategic and basic industry, and a key area for a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation. In the past ten years, the total output value of China's new materials industry has grown at a compound annual growth rate of more than 20%. Relevant national departments will adhere to goal orientation and problem orientation, continue to optimize the innovation and development ecology of new materials, coordinate the promotion of breakthroughs in shortcomings and materials first, and accelerate the development and growth of the new materials industry.
Military materials are the material basis for a new generation of weapons and equipment, and are also key technologies in the military field in today's world. Military new material technology is a new material technology used in the military field. It is the key to modern sophisticated weapons and equipment and an important part of military high technology. Countries around the world attach great importance to the development of new military material technology. Accelerating the development of new military material technology is an important prerequisite for maintaining military leadership.
1、Titanium alloy
Titanium alloy is an alloy formed by adding other alloy elements based on titanium. Titanium alloy has good corrosion resistance, fatigue resistance and high specific strength, and has an irreplaceable role in weight reduction of aerospace equipment, so it is widely used. Used in aviation engines, aircraft, missiles and other fields. In order to meet the characteristics of high speed and high maneuverability of advanced fighter aircraft, it is necessary to reduce the weight as much as possible while ensuring the structural strength of the aircraft body, and at the same time, it must have strong high temperature resistance. Titanium alloy is the metal material with the largest specific strength (Strength-Weight Ratio). It can significantly reduce the weight of the aircraft and improve the structural efficiency while meeting the high structural strength of advanced fighter aircraft.
Titanium has a series of excellent properties such as light weight, high specific strength, corrosion resistance, etc. It is an excellent lightweight, high melting point structural material, new functional material and important biomedical material. It is used in aviation, aerospace, ships, nuclear energy, chemical industry, etc. It is widely used in petroleum, metallurgy, electric power, light industry, medical care, sports, environmental protection and people's daily life. The market prospect is becoming increasingly broad with the progress of society. Titanium belongs to the category of rare metals, but titanium resources are abundant and can effectively meet the needs of social development. China, the United States, Russia, Japan and other countries have established complete titanium metallurgy, processing, application and scientific research systems. European and other countries have also established advanced titanium and its alloy processing, application and scientific research systems, providing a basis for the production of high-quality titanium materials. Reliable guarantee, so titanium is a material that peopl e are working hard to research, develop and apply
Since the late 1960s, the amount of titanium used in military aircraft has increased year by year. Currently, the amount of titanium alloy used in various advanced fighter jets and bombers designed by Europe and the United States has stabilized at more than 20%, and the amount of titanium used in the American F-22 fighter jet is as high as 41%. At present, my country's third-generation fighter aircraft uses approximately 2.25 tons of titanium alloy per aircraft, which is 12 times that of the second-generation aircraft (J-8 0.2 tons); the fourth-generation fighter aircraft uses up to approximately 3.6 tons of titanium alloy per aircraft. As the value, planned usage and quantity of titanium alloys for fourth-generation military fighters increase, the market demand for high-end titanium alloys for military use is expected to continue to increase.
With the development of modern warfare, the army needs multi-functional advanced howitzer systems with high power, long range, high accuracy and rapid response capabilities. One of the key technologies of the advanced howitzer system is new material technology. The lightweighting of materials for self-propelled artillery turrets, components, and light metal armored vehicles is an inevitable trend in the development of weapons. On the premise of ensuring dynamics and protection, titanium alloys are widely used in army weapons. The use of titanium alloy in the 155 artillery muzzle brake can not only reduce the weight, but also reduce the deformation of the artillery barrel caused by gravity, effectively improving the shooting accuracy; some complex shapes on main battle tanks and helicopter-anti-tank multi-purpose missiles The components can be made of titanium alloy, which can not only meet the performance requirements of the product but also reduce the processing cost of the parts.
For a long time in the past, the application of titanium alloys has been greatly limited due to high manufacturing costs. In recent years, countries around the world are actively developing low
Titanium is a metal with excellent properties and abundant resources developed in the 1950s. With the increasingly urgent demand for high-strength and low-density materials in the military industry, the industrialization process of titanium alloys has accelerated significantly. Abroad, the weight of titanium materials on advanced aircraft has reached 30~35% of the total weight of the aircraft structure. During the "Ninth Five-Year Plan" period in our country, in order to meet the needs of aviation, aerospace, shipbuilding and other departments, the country regarded titanium alloys as one of the priorities for the development of new materials. It is expected that the "10th Five-Year Plan" will be a period of rapid development of new titanium alloy materials and new processes in our country.
From the perspective of global market demand structure, titanium alloys are mainly used in the aviation industry, national defense industry and other industries. Among them, the application demand in the aviation industry is the largest, accounting for about 50%, mainly used in the manufacturing of aircraft and engines. However, compared with China, there are obvious differences in the demand structure for titanium products. In North America and the European Union, which have developed aerospace and military defense industries, especially the United States, more than 50% of the demand for titanium products comes from the aerospace and military defense fields. Although our country is one of the world's largest producers and consumers of titanium metal, most of our country's demand for titanium products comes from the chemical industry. The applications are mainly anti-corrosion materials with relatively low technical content. High-end demand in the aerospace field has accounted for more than half of the demand in the past two years. The ratio has increased, but it still only accounts for about 18.4% (10,000 tons), which is far less than the international average level. The above data shows that the more developed countries and countries with larger industrial scale use more titanium. The more technologically advanced countries are, the more titanium materials are used in the aerospace industry and the more high-end titanium materials are used
2、Aluminum alloy
Aluminum alloy is one of the light metal materials. It is an alloy based on aluminum with a certain amount of other alloying elements added. In addition to the general characteristics of aluminum, it also has high strength, good casting performance and plastic processing performance, and good electrical conductivity. Characteristics such as thermal conductivity, good corrosion resistance and weldability. Aluminum alloy has the characteristics of low density, good mechanical properties, good processing performance, non-toxicity, easy recycling, excellent electrical conductivity, heat transfer and corrosion resistance, etc., making it widely used. It is currently used in the marine industry, chemical industry, aerospace, It is widely used in metal packaging, transportation and other fields.
Aluminum alloy has always been the most widely used metal structural material in the military industry. Aluminum alloy has the characteristics of low density, high strength, and good processing performance. As a structural material, due to its excellent processing performance, it can be made into profiles, pipes, high-reinforced plates, etc. of various cross-sections to fully utilize the potential of the material and improve components. Rigidity and strength. Therefore, aluminum alloy is the preferred lightweight structural material for lightweight weapons.
In the aviation industry, aluminum alloys are mainly used to manufacture aircraft skins, partitions, long beams, and trim bars. In the aerospace industry, aluminum alloys are important materials for structural parts of launch vehicles and spacecraft. In the field of weapons, aluminum alloys have been successfully used. It is widely used in infantry fighting vehicles and armored transport vehicles. The recently developed howitzer mount also uses a large number of new aluminum alloy materials.
At present, high-end aluminum alloys in China's aerospace and shipbuilding fields can be independently produced. However, due to weak technology accumulation and insufficient production process control, product performance uniformity is poor or the qualification rate is low. Compared with foreign costs, There are gaps in control. However, with the accumulation of experience and gradual breakthroughs in key technologies, the industrial chain is continuing to deepen its development into high-end areas. At present, aluminum alloy is the second largest metal material after steel, and it is developing towards applications such as high strength, high toughness, corrosion resistance, intelligence, precision, and compactness. Data show that my country's domestic aluminum alloy production in 2022 will be 12.183 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 14.07%.
3、Magnesium alloy
Magnesium can form an alloy with aluminum, copper, zinc, zirconium, thorium and other metals. Compared with pure magnesium, this alloy has better mechanical properties and is a good structural material. Although deformed magnesium alloys have good overall properties, magnesium has a close-packed hexagonal lattice, which makes plastic processing difficult and costly. Therefore, the current consumption of deformed magnesium alloys is much less than that of cast magnesium alloys. There are dozens of elements in the periodic table that can be alloyed with magnesium.
Since the 20th century, magnesium alloys have been used in the aerospace field. Since magnesium alloy can greatly improve the aerodynamic performance of the aircraft and significantly reduce its structural weight, many parts are made of it. Generally, magnesium alloys used in aviation are mainly plates and extruded profiles, and a small part are castings. The current application fields of magnesium alloys in aviation include civil aircraft parts, propellers, gearboxes, bracket structures and some parts of rockets, missiles and satellites for various civilian and military aircraft. With the development of magnesium alloy production technology, the performance will continue to improve and the application scope will continue to expand.
Magnesium alloy has good light weight, machinability, corrosion resistance, shock absorption, dimensional stability and impact resistance, which is far superior to other materials. These properties enable magnesium alloys to be used in a wide range of fields, such as transportation, electronics industry, medical field, military industry, etc. This trend is only increasing. Especially in the fields of 3C products (Computer, Consumer Electronic Product, Communication), high-speed rail, automobiles, bicycles, aerospace, architectural decoration, handheld tools, medical rehabilitation equipment and other fields, it has good application prospects and great potential. Becoming one of the development directions of new materials in the future. Among the more than 400 new materials catalog designated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to support development during the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period, 12 are related to magnesium.
The use of magnesium alloys in military equipment can improve the strength of structural parts, reduce the weight of equipment, and improve the hit rate of weapons. At the same time, magnesium alloys can meet the requirements for material noise absorption, shock absorption, and radiation protection in high-tech fields such as aerospace, significantly improve the aerodynamic performance of aircraft, and reduce structural weight. Therefore, magnesium alloys are often used in the manufacture of cabinets, wall panels, brackets, wheel hubs for aircraft and land vehicles, as well as engine cylinder blocks, cylinder head cases, pistons and other parts. At the same time, magnesium alloys are also used to manufacture some military equipment. , such as bunker supports, mortar bases and missiles, etc. With the deepening of magnesium alloy research and the improvement of material properties, magnesium alloys will be increasingly used in weapons.
4、High temperature alloy
High-temperature alloys generally refer to a type of metal materials that use iron, nickel, and cobalt as matrix elements and can still have good material strength, fatigue resistance, and creep resistance under the simultaneous action of stress and high temperature (above 600°C). At present, high-temperature alloys are mainly used in the four hot-end components of aeroengines: combustion chambers, guides, turbine blades and turbine disks. They are also used in casings, rings, afterburners and tail nozzles. The wide range of applications makes high-temperature alloys the most critical structural material in promoting the development of aero-engines. The technological progress of aero-engines is closely related to the development of high-temperature alloys.
High-temperature alloys have excellent properties and have a wide range of applications. High-temperature alloy refers to a type of metal material based on iron, nickel, and cobalt that can work at high temperatures above 600°C and under certain stress for a long time. High-temperature alloys have high high-temperature strength, good resistance to oxidation and corrosion, good fatigue resistance, fracture toughness and other comprehensive properties, and are also called "superalloys". From the perspective of application fields of high-temperature alloys: in the field of civil industry, they can be used in diesel engine booster turbines, flue gas turbine blades and disks, metallurgical rolling steel heating furnace pads, internal combustion engine exhaust valve seats, etc. In addition, the application scope of high-temperature alloys has been continuously expanding in recent years, and there has been significant progress in applications in petrochemical, glass and fiberglass, and machinery manufacturing industries. In the field of military industry, nickel-based high-temperature alloys are currently key hot-end component materials for modern aerospace engines, spacecraft and rocket engines, as well as ships and industrial gas turbines. They are also important high-temperature structural materials needed in nuclear reactors, chemical equipment, coal conversion technology, etc. As an important material in the military and civilian fields, high-temperature alloys have broad application space and have important economic and strategic significance.
According to data from Guanyan Tianxia, my country's high-temperature alloy market size increased from 7.8 billion yuan to 18.7 billion yuan from 2015 to 2020, a three-fold increase in 5 years. In the future, as the huge endogenous demand for military aerospace engines is released, it is expected that the market size of my country's high-temperature alloy industry will reach 85.6 billion yuan by 2025, with a CAGR of 35.56%.
5、ultra high strength steel
Ultra-high-strength steel is a type of alloy steel used to make structural parts that can withstand higher stresses. Generally, steels with yield strength greater than 1180MPa and tensile strength greater than 1380MPa generally have sufficient toughness, high specific strength and yield ratio, as well as good weldability and formability. According to the degree of alloying and microstructure, it can be divided into three categories: low alloy, medium alloy and high alloy ultra-high strength steel. In February 2018, a new generation of ultra-high-strength steel based on coherent nanoprecipitation strengthening was developed, which won the title of the Ministry of Science and Technology's Top Ten Scientific Progress in China in 2017.
China began trial production of ultra-high-strength steel in the 1950s. Combining domestic resource conditions, we have successfully developed low-alloy ultra-high-strength steels such as 35Si2Mn2MoVA, 40CrMnSiMoVA and 33Si2MnCrMoVREA. These materials have been used to manufacture important components such as aircraft landing gear and solid rocket motor casings. After 1980, vacuum smelting technology was used to improve the purity of steel, and 40CrNi2Si2MoVA, 45CrNiMo1VA and 18Ni maraging steel were successfully trial-produced. Remarkable progress has been made in the development and application of ultra-high-strength steel. Since the 1990s, new breakthroughs have been made in the research of new materials and new processes, and new progress has been made in the development and application of ultra-high-strength steel with high fracture toughness for aviation and aerospace.
6、Tungsten alloy
Among metals, tungsten has the highest melting point, good high-temperature strength, creep resistance, thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity and electron emission properties, as well as a large specific gravity. In addition to a large number of cemented carbide and alloy additives, tungsten and its alloys are widely used in the electronics and electric light source industries, and are also used in aerospace, casting, weapons and other sectors to manufacture rocket nozzles, die-casting molds, armor-piercing cores, contacts, Heating elements and heat shields, etc.
Tungsten has the highest melting point among metals. Its outstanding advantage is that its high melting point brings good high-temperature strength and corrosion resistance to the material. It has shown excellent characteristics in the military industry, especially in weapons manufacturing. In the weapons industry, it is mainly used to make the warheads of various armor-piercing projectiles. Tungsten alloy uses powder pretreatment technology and large deformation strengthening technology to refine the material's grains and elongate the grain orientation, thereby improving the material's strength, toughness and penetration power. The tungsten core material of the Type 125II armor-piercing projectile developed by our country is W-Ni-Fe, which adopts a variable density compact sintering process. Its average performance reaches a tensile strength of 1,200 MPa, an elongation of more than 15%, and a combat technical index of 2,000 meters. Distance penetrates 600 mm thick homogeneous steel armor. At present, tungsten alloy is widely used as the core material for main battle tank large aspect ratio armor-piercing projectiles, small and medium-caliber anti-aircraft armor-piercing projectiles and ultra-high-speed kinetic energy armor-piercing projectiles, which makes various armor-piercing projectiles have more powerful penetration power.
With the advancement of scientific development, tungsten alloy materials have become the raw materials for making military products today, such as bullets, armor and artillery shells, shrapnel heads, grenades, shotguns, bullet warheads, bulletproof vehicles, armored tanks, military aviation, artillery parts, guns, etc. Armor-piercing projectiles made of tungsten alloy can penetrate armor and composite armor at large angles, and are the main anti-tank weapons.
7、metal matrix composites
Metal matrix composite materials have high specific strength, high specific modulus, good high temperature performance, low thermal expansion coefficient, good dimensional stability, and excellent electrical and thermal conductivity and have been widely used in the military industry. Aluminum, magnesium, and titanium are the main matrices of metal matrix composites. Reinforcement materials can generally be divided into three categories: fibers, particles, and whiskers. Among them, particle-reinforced aluminum matrix composites have entered model verification, such as used in F-16 fighter jets. The ventral fin replaces aluminum alloy, and its stiffness and lifespan are greatly improved.Carbon fiber reinforced aluminum and magnesium-based composite materials not only have high specific strength, but also have a thermal expansion coefficient close to zero and good dimensional stability. They have been successfully used to make artificial satellite brackets, L-band planar antennas, space telescopes, and artificial satellites. Parabolic antennas, etc.; silicon carbide particle reinforced aluminum matrix composite materials have good high temperature performance and anti-wear characteristics, and can be used to make rocket and missile components, infrared and laser guidance system components, precision avionics devices, etc.; silicon carbide fiber reinforced titanium matrix Composite materials have good high temperature resistance and oxidation resistance and are ideal structural materials for engines with high thrust-to-weight ratio. They have now entered the testing stage of advanced engines. In the field of weapons industry, metal matrix composite materials can be used in large-caliber tail stabilized armor-piercing sabots, anti-helicopter/anti-tank multi-purpose missile solid engine casings and other components to reduce the weight of the warhead and improve combat capabilities.
It has been more than 40 years since the advent of metal matrix composite materials. Due to their excellent physical and mechanical properties such as high specific strength, specific modulus, high temperature resistance, wear resistance, small thermal expansion coefficient, and good dimensional stability, they have overcome the challenges of resin-based materials. The shortcomings of composite materials used in the aerospace field have led to remarkable development and have become an important area of high-tech research and development in various countries. Due to the imperfect processing technology and high cost of metal matrix composite materials, large-scale mass production has not yet been formed, so it is still a hot spot in current research and development.