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On March 3, 2002, after several twists and turns, the "Varyag" finally arrived at Dalian Port smoothly, surrounded by many ships, and from the arrival of the "Varyag" in China to the launch of the "Liaoning", China walked for 11 years.
At that time, after the return of the "Varyag", China quickly discovered a thorny problem, that is, the steel on the ship had rusted and deteriorated, but China could not make such steel at that time.
How difficult is it to make steel for aircraft carriers? Has China broken the monopoly of the United States and Russia and mastered the technology of manufacturing steel for aircraft carriers?
How difficult is it to build the steel needed to repair the Varyag?
"Varyag" is an unbuilt aircraft carrier in the Soviet era, when it was inherited by Ukraine, this aircraft carrier had only an empty shell, and later Ukraine decided to sell the aircraft carrier due to lack of funds.
After negotiations with patriots, Ukraine is willing to sell the aircraft carrier and the blueprints to us at a high price of "20 million US dollars", which is a major turning point in China's aircraft carrier industry.
By the time it arrived in China, the aircraft carrier had been soaked in highly saline waters for eight years and was in a state of lack of maintenance.
Coupled with the time of construction, this aircraft carrier has a history of nearly 20 years, and the life of an aircraft carrier is generally 30 years, so it can be regarded as a "veteran of the old man".
Therefore, when the "Varyag" first arrived in China, people saw a dilapidated ship covered with rust and garbage, and this scene makes it difficult to believe that this is an aircraft carrier.
However, after removing the rust from the surface, the engineers found that the steel plates of the "Varyag" were still shiny, due to the use of high-strength nickel-chromium alloy steel in the Soviet Union.
However, if China wants to transform the "Varyag", it is necessary to solve the problem of "no steel available".
Since the steel plate of the "Varyag" could generally continue to be used at that time, China's desire to transform it into the Liaoning ship was more to repair its steel, and this heavy task fell on Anshan Iron and Steel.
Anshan Iron and Steel is known as the "eldest son of the steel industry of the Republic", and more than 70% of the steel used in China's aircraft carriers comes from Anshan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd.
The main material used in the restoration of the Varyag is commonly known as "symmetrical ball flat steel", a special steel with a rounded head like a ball, but a flat belly.
Before receiving the task of producing symmetrical flat ball steel, no domestic enterprise, including Anshan Iron and Steel, has the ability to produce this special steel, which is another leap from zero to one for Anshan Iron and Steel.
Considering the limited production period, Angang chose to produce products while researching products, and the first attempt to produce products was two months after receiving the task.
As a result, the engineers arrived at the site with only a headache, because the mill simply couldn't roll symmetrical flat ball steel that met the standard.
Not only is there no way to produce products that meet the standards, but it is also difficult to improve production efficiency, and a few steels are rolled in more than ten hours a day, but what is the difficulty in producing symmetrical flat ball steel?
To put it simply, the shape of symmetrical flat ball steel is different from that of ordinary steel, and the design is also relatively special, and it is difficult to roll the shape of symmetrical flat ball steel.
At the same time, Anshan Iron and Steel does not have a production line dedicated to building symmetrical flat ball steel, and the overall production effect is not optimistic.
In order to avoid the production of twisted steel, Angang engineers invested a lot of effort and cost, and finally successfully delivered 200 tons of steel in May 2009.
What is even more surprising is that in the past, it took about 5 to 10 years for Angang to achieve these R&D goals, but in the face of the country's need for aircraft carriers, Angang only took one to three years to achieve these R&D goals.
However, the production of aircraft carrier flat ball steel is only the beginning of independent research on steel, and if you want to independently manufacture aircraft carriers, the most important thing is to produce qualified aircraft carrier deck steel.
What kind of steel is used to produce aircraft carrier deck steel?
The deck is the core part of the entire aircraft carrier, and the requirements for steel can be said to have reached the ceiling.
Because the flight deck has to bear the huge impact force generated by the carrier-based aircraft during take-off and landing, and it also has to withstand the scorching exhaust flames of jet aircraft with a temperature of thousands of degrees.
At that time, only the United States and Russia had mastered the technology of producing special steel for aircraft carrier decks, but both countries banned the export of aircraft carrier deck steel and related technologies.
Judging from the level of production of special steel for aircraft carriers, the United States, which has the most aircraft carriers, is obviously superior.
There are two series of special steel in the United States, one is HY series special steel, in which the yield strength of HY-80 can reach 850 megapascals, and the yield strength mainly refers to the maximum yield of the steel.
Later, on the basis of HY-80, the United States developed HY-100 with a yield strength of not less than 686 megapascals, which has better corrosion resistance and stronger overall performance.
The other is the HSLA series of steel, which was first successfully developed in the United States in the 80s of the 20th century.
Among them, HSLA-80 has better performance than HY-80, and has basically gradually replaced HY-80. The yield strength of HSLA-100 has reached 690 megapascals, which is comparable to that of HY-100.
In other words, in order to produce the world's top special steel, the yield strength of the steel should not be less than 690 megapascals.
After determining the performance indicators of steel, the state decided to hand over the arduous task of producing aircraft carrier steel to the "Anshan Iron and Steel Group".
How does Angang break the US-Russia blockade?
In 2011, Anshan Iron and Steel officially received the task of manufacturing aircraft carrier deck steel, which made Anshan Iron and Steel also feel very "shocked".
Because the length of deck steel required by the state at that time was four pieces of steel plates normally produced by Anshan Iron and Steel, the specifications of this kind of deck steel were almost challenging the limit of Anshan Iron and Steel, but why did we produce such large steel plates? This is related to the deck area of the aircraft carrier and the amount of welding work.
Usually the deck area of an aircraft carrier reaches more than 15,000 square meters, so a large number of steel plates are welded together.
It is worth mentioning that in the production of aircraft carrier projects, the time spent on welding work accounts for 30% of the total man-hours of the aircraft carrier.
It can be seen that for aircraft carriers, the larger the production steel plate, the smaller the amount of work that needs to be welded, which can shorten the construction period.
In order to be able to produce deck steel as soon as possible, Anshan Iron and Steel first purchased a five-meter-five ultra-wide rolling mill from overseas, which has the world's largest production capacity and is known as the "king of global rolling mills".
The king of the mills weighs more than 760 tons and has about 100,000 parts.
Despite the availability of heavyweight machines for producing steel, this is not the same thing as producing steel directly.
In order to ensure the smooth progress of R&D and production, Zhao Gang, the leader, has to take the high-speed rail to the factory more than 100 kilometers away from Anshan from time to time to inspect and pay close attention to the production process of deck steel.
There are also staff in charge of production revealed that for more than a month, they almost lived in the factory, working more than ten hours a day.
With their hard work day and night, Anshan Iron and Steel finally produced 690MPa deck steel within the expected time, which is similar to the steel used by the American "Ford-class" aircraft carriers.
With the successful development of deck steel by Anshan Iron and Steel, China has become the third country in the world to be able to independently produce deck steel for aircraft carriers.
At present, in addition to some steel with relatively low performance requirements, most of the steel of domestic aircraft carriers is produced by Anshan Iron and Steel, and it is precisely because of the localization of aircraft carrier steel that Shandong ships and Fujian ships can be launched so quickly.
Whether it is the symmetrical flat ball steel used in the repair of the predecessor of the Liaoning ship, or the deck special steel used in the production of the Shandong ship, this is a test for China, a large steel country.
As the "big brother", Angang Group has led the national steel industry step by step to conquer aircraft carrier steel, which reflects the spirit of Chinese people and enterprises to struggle and work hard.
It is also by virtue of this spirit that we ushered in the commissioning of the Liaoning ship and the Shandong ship and the launch of the Fujian ship, and now the sea trial of the Fujian ship is imminent, which shows that China will officially enter the "three aircraft carrier era" in the near future, and the maritime strength will be greatly enhanced!