In recent years, with the upgrading of China's industry and the improvement of forging and casting technology, China has begun to move from a "big forging and casting country" to a "forging and casting power." Business transformation and upgrading, professional integration, and industrial chain extension are the development trends of the forging and casting industry. With reference to overseas experience, the opportunity for the high-end transformation of China's forging and casting industry lies in the use of precision casting, large forging and high-performance materials, and these upgrade directions The core application scenarios are again dominated by the aerospace market, so high value-added areas dominated by aviation and gas turbines will be an important breakthrough in the high-end transformation of China's forging and casting industry.
Precision casting
Precision casting, mainly investment casting, is the main way to prepare high value-added alloy steel, stainless steel, and special alloy castings. Traditional low-end parts and components generally have low technical content, mainly cast iron, carbon steel and other ordinary materials, with low entry barriers and a high degree of fragmentation in the industry; while high-end parts and components market is based on alloy steel, stainless steel, and special alloys with high technical content. Castings are the main products, requiring high precision castings, low surface roughness, and the ability to achieve little or no cutting, which has high technical barriers. Precision casting, especially investment casting, as one of the most complex casting processes, can support the best molding that cannot be matched by any other casting method. It is used to produce complex shaped castings while maintaining high dimensional accuracy and high surface quality, and is suitable for casting Almost all metals. With the gradual increase and improvement of demand and requirements for high-end parts and components under industrial transformation and upgrading, the proportion of high-end precision castings will increase substantially in the future.
Aerospace is the core market for high-end casting, accounting for 39% of the market share and driving 50% of incremental demand. Observing the global investment casting market, from 2001 to 2018, the aerospace sector not only accounted for the highest proportion of the downstream market (close to 40%), but also contributed 50% of the incremental demand of $2.8 billion in 7 years. There is no doubt that the aerospace sector is the most important and most stable sub-sector of the high-end casting market. This phenomenon is more obvious in developed countries such as the United States and Europe (aerospace accounts for up to 59% of the investment casting market in the United States). According to Roland Berger’s forecast, the global investment casting market is expected to grow from US$14.2 billion in 2018 to US$17.4 billion in 2023 at a compound annual growth rate of 4.1%. The aerospace sector is still the largest source of revenue and growth. It is expected to contribute 1.3 billion yuan in incremental demand.
In the field of investment casting, North America and Europe are the main players in the current market, accounting for 67% of the total, while China is only 20%. In 2018, North America and Europe accounted for 43% and 24% of the global investment casting market respectively. Take the United States as an example. In its precision casting market, aviation forging castings mainly composed of superalloys, special steels and titanium alloys occupy Absolute share. Investment casting in North America is dominated by high value-added (aerospace and gas turbine) castings, with a proportion of over 70%. In terms of market distribution, aerospace parts accounted for 59%, and industrial gas turbines accounted for 20%; in terms of casting materials, high-temperature alloys accounted for 57%, and titanium alloys accounted for 11%. It can be found that high-added downstream markets and difficult-to-deform metals account for most of the output value of North American investment casting companies. On the other hand, China only occupies a 20% share of the global market, but has already occupied a dominant position in the Asian market. In 2018, it accounted for more than 60% of the total Asian market share. This is mainly due to the investment in the aerospace and automotive industries in recent years. The growth of casting applications. The low share of investment casting sales in China is mainly due to the small number of high value-added products (aerospace and gas turbines account for only 13%), but in the future, with the continuous growth of domestic aircraft and international subcontracting demand, high value-added products Market share is expected to grow rapidly.
High-end processing, mainly high-end processing of large forging and castings of difficult-to-deform metal such as high-temperature alloys and titanium alloys, is the main direction of development
According to the definition of large castings and forgings by the China Forging Association, large forgings refer to free forgings produced by hydraulic presses over 1,000 tons and free forging hammers over 5 tons, and hot die forging equipment over 6,000 tons and die forging hammers over 10 tons. Forgings. Large forgings are mainly used to manufacture key and important parts of major equipment. The products require high comprehensive performance, complex processes, and most of them are specially customized. The main application directions of large forgings include aircraft, diesel engines, ships, weapons, petrochemicals, mining, nuclear power, thermal power, hydropower and other fields. After the peak of production of 10,000-ton lines in 2010, China has realized the autonomy of large forgings in most areas, such as 700MW hydropower units, 1000MW nuclear power plants, and supercritical thermal power plants.
In the field of large forgings of difficult-to-deform metal, large forgings in the field of aviation and gas turbine and aviation launch equipment, China has been catching up with the advanced technology of the world powers. With the rapid development of the aviation industry, the ultimate pursuit of lightweight and reliability of aircraft has given rise to increasingly higher requirements for the performance of materials and forgings. Titanium alloys, high-temperature alloys and other materials are increasingly widely used. The amount of titanium alloys used in American F-22 and F-35 aircraft has reached 41% and 27%, respectively. The weight of high-temperature alloys and titanium alloy forgings in advanced aeroengines accounts for the weight of the total engine structure. 55%~65%. High-temperature alloys and titanium alloys are difficult to deform materials, that is, narrow processing parameters, large deformation resistance, and microstructure properties are very sensitive to the processing process. Therefore, the application of forging technology in the aviation manufacturing field is more difficult than other industrial fields. The production capacity of large die forgings often becomes a bottleneck restricting the capacity of a country's aviation industry, and can even directly determine whether a certain aircraft model is feasible. For example, the titanium alloy landing gear used in the world's largest passenger aircraft A380 must be processed by a Russian 750MN die forging hydraulic machine, which is not yet available in Western Europe.