From being initially unacceptable by customers to being adopted by home furnishing giants such as IKEA, to products being widely used by domestic and foreign automotive giants such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Land Rover, Guangzhou Honda, Haval, etc., Chinese cellular composite material manufacturer GZHL Cellular Material Technology Group The dream in the field of quantitative cellular composite materials is gradually becoming a reality.
"At present, the honeycomb composite material market is still immature. I hope that more people can do it and jointly promote this industry." GZHL Honeycomb Material Technology Group (hereinafter referred to as "GZHL") founder and chief scientist Dr. Wang Wenming told Hay Think said that the biggest challenge facing the future development of honeycomb materials is still the change of traditional concepts.
In fact, GZHL, founded in 1995, has been in the field of honeycomb composite materials for more than 20 years. Although it has experienced several twists and turns, it still focuses on the lightening of honeycomb materials. In this field, it is already a veritable "invisible". champion".
Honeycomb composite material is an ultra-light composite structure derived from bionics and was first used in aviation and aerospace fields. Western developed countries developed and applied civilian honeycomb materials earlier. The honeycomb composite panels have a history of more than 50 years and are widely used in many fields such as construction, transportation, packaging and furniture manufacturing.
And Dr. Wang Wenming and the GZHL he founded are the market founders who introduced honeycomb materials into China and made them large-scale and innovative for civilian use.
As early as 1995, Dr. Wenming Wang won the capital and technical support of the Dutch LS Group, the largest producer of honeycomb paper core materials in Europe, and returned to China with the honeycomb paper core project and took the lead in researching and developing a new type of honeycomb composite that can completely replace wooden transport pallets. tray. In the next few years, GZHL has successively developed simple honeycomb paperboard processing production lines, honeycomb paper core stretching and drying equipment, semi-automatic honeycomb panel composite production lines and other complete sets of honeycomb composite panel processing equipment and production lines suitable for China’s national conditions, and have joined hands with the Netherlands LS Group in China Established the first cellular technology and product research and development center.
"At present, the largest application area of our honeycomb material is the furniture market, which accounts for nearly 60% of GZHL's sales. The honeycomb material provided to IKEA alone reaches several million square meters each year." Honeycomb material is actually a lightweight product. Products, resource conservation and environmental protection play an important role in the lightweight of the furniture industry.
However, the traditional concept of incomprehension of honeycomb materials still troubles GZHL.
"The understanding of traditional Chinese concepts on furniture is more the heavy feeling of solid wood. For honeycomb materials, many people initially regarded them as'inferior products'. The large-scale application of IKEA played a very important role in promoting and promoting." Dr. Wang Wenming believes In many cases, the application of new materials is facing the subversion of traditional concepts, but as long as the performance indicators of the product can meet the needs and the cost performance is high enough, the large-scale application of honeycomb materials is an inevitable trend.
According to Dr. Wang Wenming, GZHL is currently working with Vanke to promote the application of honeycomb composite materials in the field of prefabricated buildings. "Using honeycomb materials to make a whole bathroom or a whole wall panel, this piece may be a bigger market in the future."
In the application of honeycomb materials in the packaging field, the environmentally friendly packaging of honeycomb materials designed by GZHL for Haier washing machines in 2012 even won the "Packaging Star Award" from the International Packaging Organization.
"The packaging field was actually the first that we promoted. Midea, Gree, Haier and other brands of air-conditioning packaging were the first to use honeycomb materials." Dr. Wang Wenming said that only Haier's honeycomb packaging materials were sold annually during the most prosperous period. The amount reached several hundred million yuan.
Although many companies have returned to foam packaging based on cost considerations after oil prices have fallen, honeycomb materials still dominate the export packaging field.
Pursue lightweight car
As the future automobile industry accelerates toward the road of "new energy, intelligence, and lightweight", a new and imaginative market opportunity for lightweight materials for automobiles is opening up. Automobile non-metallic materials, including honeycomb composite materials, are ushering in an unprecedented golden period in history.
Through ten years of outstanding R&D and application promotion, GZHL has won the favor of Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Land Rover, Honda, Haval, Geely and other vehicle companies in the field of automotive lightweighting.
"With the promotion of relevant national fuel limit policies, it is imperative to reduce the weight of automobiles. The application of honeycomb materials in the automotive field has been relatively good in the past two years. In 2017, the sales of GZHL in the entire automotive industry reached almost 5 million square meters. Sales volume." Dr. Wenming Wang told Hay Think that, as a mass consumer product, automobiles have very strict cost control, and honeycomb materials undoubtedly have an absolute advantage in terms of performance and price. Honeycomb materials are very useful in the field of automotive lightweighting. .
As early as 2007, GZHL first began to study the honeycomb structural panels of passenger cars in China. In 2008, it applied for a utility model patent "a load mat for passenger car trunks", and obtained the State Intellectual Property Office in 2009 Authorization. As of December 2017, GZHL has obtained more than 60 authorized patents in the field of honeycomb materials, including 11 invention patents. In 2017 alone, it applied for 12 patents. The comprehensive and systematic intellectual property layout also allows for intellectual property rights. The demanding automotive industry has great confidence and trust in GZHL.
With the continuous increase in research and development investment in the application of honeycomb composite materials in the automotive field, the project "R&D and large-scale industrialization of passenger car honeycomb structure panels" jointly declared by GZHL and Guangzhou HH Composite Materials Co., Ltd. was included in the 2012 The "Special Plan for the Development and Guidance of High-tech Zones" was funded by the GD provincial government's R&D funds. The project was completed at the end of 2013, and large-scale industrialization and application began.
According to Wang Wenming, GZHL has developed high-strength small-aperture honeycomb paper core continuous production technology, process and equipment, which have been successfully used in the production of passenger car interior decorative panels. In addition, the continuous aluminum honeycomb developed by GZHL has good structural strength and cushioning performance, and is widely used in vehicle exterior parts and some structural parts.
“In 2013, a high-strength small-aperture honeycomb structure material production line for passenger cars was built in GZHL Guangzhou, forming an annual production capacity of 5 million square meters of honeycomb materials for passenger cars. In 2014, another new line was built in GZHL Changshu branch. The production line of honeycomb materials for passenger cars has increased the production capacity of honeycomb materials for passenger cars to 10 million square meters." Dr. Wenming Wang said that the honeycomb car panels use a spraying process to composite polyurethane glass fiber and GZHL honeycomb paper core into a Lightweight, high bending strength, good dimensional stability, corrosion resistance, high production efficiency, flexible design and other advantages. Compared with traditional materials, under the same rigidity conditions, its weight is reduced by more than 2/3, which greatly reduces the weight of the plate and meets the technical requirements of lightweight passenger cars.
It is understood that honeycomb composite materials can be widely used in automobile sunroofs, spare tire covers, luggage compartment partitions, shelf boards and other parts. At present, it includes well-known domestic and foreign auto parts manufacturers such as Perzer, Webasto, Boxin, etc. All started to use GZHL honeycomb materials to make various interior panels for various passenger cars such as Land Rover, Volvo, Ford, Changan and Haval.
"In addition to the current two major markets for furniture and automobiles, GZHL has been doing research and development technology reserves in the field of lightweight materials including high-speed rail and aircraft." Dr. Wang Wenming told "Materials for Great Power" that in 2017, about 5,000 high-speed rail cars were produced in China. This lightweight material will be a huge market opportunity.