On July 23, China’s “Tianwen-1” Mars rover took off on the Long March 5 Yaosi carrier rocket, launching China’s first autonomous Mars exploration mission. In response to the requirements of different structural components of the “Tianwen No. 1” rover, Ma Zongyi’s team from ZKJS Institute of Metals has developed a new type of aluminum-based silicon carbide composite materials. The related products are used in dozens of parts such as rover structures, mechanisms, and instruments.
The rover has to travel long distances on the surface of Mars with complex working conditions. This puts extremely high requirements on the light weight, high strength and toughness, high dimensional stability, and impact resistance of the rover material. Traditional aluminum and titanium alloys cannot meet the comprehensive requirements. .
Since undertaking the development task in 2015, Ma Zongyi’s team has designed a series of new high-strength, high-plasticity, and high-stability aluminum-based silicon carbide composite materials, and proposed a new design idea of low-alloy elements and mixed and strengthened multi-element precipitates.
Compared with traditional aluminum-based silicon carbide composites, the new composites have more than doubled the plasticity while maintaining high strength, high isotropy, high wear resistance and stability. By solving the technical bottlenecks of large-size billet preparation and material plastic forming, composite material samples of different specifications have been developed. The new aluminum-based silicon carbide composite material developed by the Institute of Metals has passed the harsh ground simulation assessment under the near working conditions, and the related technical solutions have been highly recognized by users, making ZKJS Metal Research the only supplier of aluminum-based composite materials for the Mars Rover.