Source: CCTV
Original title: Liu Yuanyuan: Exerting youth in the world of aerospace materials
CCTV News (Reporter Chen Shiwen Correspondent Tian Shaoxing): From the high-temperature gas system of the engine on the Long March 5 series rockets, to the low-temperature lock cabinet loaded by the "Tianzhou-1"... Aerogel products have been applied to more than two dozen types of aerospace equipment. The scientific research team behind this aerogel material comes from the 306 Institute of the Third Academy of Aerospace Science and Industry of China.
This year marks the fifth year that young technician Liu Yuanyuan has joined the aerogel materials team at 306 institutes. In 2016, Liu Yuanyuan, a doctoral student who is about to graduate from Tsinghua University, stood at the fork in the road of life choices, and once he would scratch his head because he did not have a specific career ideal. When she heard the school's advocacy of "entering the mainstream, going on the big stage, and doing a career", the outline of the ideal in her heart was also clear - "to go to a place where you can 'do a big cause'!" ”
Submit a resume, enter a job... Soon, Liu Yuanyuan came to the 306 Institute of the Third Academy of China Aerospace Science and Industry in Yungang, Fengtai, and began to develop the "coat" of the spacecraft - thermal protective materials. Studying business assiduously and having the courage to practice and innovate are the most intuitive impressions of Liu Yuanyuan. At present, the aerogel material developed by Liu Yuanyuan's team has been applied in multi-type weapons and equipment.
She said: "I am a lucky person, I chose aerospace as a lifelong career, aerospace provided me with a stage to exert my youth and sweat! ”
"Destiny in Peril"
Just arrived at the institute, Liu Yuanyuan is mainly engaged in pre-research work, carrying out cutting-edge technical research, and providing technical reserves for the long-term development of enterprises. "For the development of new materials, at the beginning, we mainly focused on some of its key properties." In her words, it is necessary to grasp one of the "strengths" of the material and make the performance of the strengths to the extreme.
Half a year later, she received an urgent task - the institute decided to use a new type of thermal protective material that her team was developing to solve the urgent need for the model through the demonstration of the plan.
"At that time, this material was still in the stage of laboratory research, and we needed to quickly tackle the problem in a short development cycle, and to solve all the shortcomings of this material, so that the model could be used." Liu Yuanyuan said.
Having received such a major task in just six months of employment, the pressure is self-evident. Despite this, Liu Yuanyuan chose to seize the opportunity of this exercise to grow. When she thought that in the future, the models of equipment or civilian products that flew in the sky, ran on the ground, and swam in the water might be used in the materials she participated in the development, and she had unspeakable excitement in her heart.
In this way, while doing the pre-research work, Liu Yuanyuan also shouldered the new task of model research. However, "new" means more uncertainty, more unknowns. There were many problems and many difficulties, but there was very little time left for her and her colleagues.
To save time, the team chose multiple lines to run parallel and conducted a large number of experiments at the same time. The material performance assessment is too late to wait for the wind tunnel test, they use quartz lamps and muffle furnaces to simulate first; the research cycle is too late to wait for the results of optimization, they will try all the conditions first; the plan has not yet been supported, they will prepare the new plan at any time, and there will always be alternatives.
In just over half a year, she and her team members jointly carried out more than 200 sets of comparative tests, and developed five generations of modified aerogel products with improved performance in turn, which were better than other competitive units, laying the foundation for the promotion and application of subsequent materials on multiple models.
Scientists work hard
Just when Liu Yuanyuan's due date was still a week away, their development plan passed the important test of the model background, and the big stone in her heart finally fell, which made her feel at ease to put down her work and go on maternity leave.
However, the research of aerospace materials is far from making a small sample, and it is necessary to face many problems outside the laboratory to make the materials really used in model equipment.
On the first day of returning to the unit after maternity leave, Liu Yuanyuan found that her colleagues were all anxious, and the first sentence she saw was: "Yuanyuan you can come back, several zeros are waiting to be solved!" ”
"Zeroing" means that the previous plan has gone wrong and requires some work to find out the crux of the problem, which is also the key link to ensure the success of the next trial.
"Zeroing is no stranger to us researchers. But when I actually faced it, I did pinch a cold sweat, not to mention, we faced not one zero, but several! Liu Yuanyuan recalled. Now that the problem has arisen, face it and solve it so that the product can continue to improve.
Sure enough, they found in the zeroing work that due to the tight development cycle, the material was not fully verified, so there were many problems that were not expected. The process of finding problems and solving problems is also very difficult, in the words of Liu Yuanyuan, like a roller coaster, just feel as if the problem was found, and finally found that it is not; just feel that the solution was found, and finally failed.
"On the road of aerospace material development, it is bound to be full of setbacks, failures, and unknowns, and it is necessary to have a firm determination to tackle key problems and make arduous efforts." It is with this belief that in the process of repeated defeats and repeated defeats, they have finally found the source of the problem, and the products they have made are more and more beautiful, and they are no longer always "disliked", but praised.
There are strict time nodes for model development. In the face of the tense cycle, they use the backward method, put the "back wall" up first, for the goal, to make a very detailed work plan for themselves, so detailed that there will be specific work tasks every day, and then after completing the phased tasks, they will give feedback on the information and dynamically adjust their plans.
In order to catch up with the progress, Liu Yuanyuan also filled the evening and weekend. Sometimes the child is asleep, and she still wants to go back to the unit to continue working. Even if she can't go back in person, she will always ask in WeChat, "How is the experiment?" In the eyes of her colleagues, a steady stream of energy was accumulated in her thin little body. Even if she is tired at work sometimes, she always motivates herself: "If you stick to it a little longer, you may succeed." ”
"I'm not alone in the fight"
"When studying new materials, most of the time the problems that arise are unexpected." Liu Yuanyuan said that when using a small material in a large area for engineering construction, we will encounter the problem of molding quality and the problem of schedule control, which is because our understanding of the material is still limited. ”
"Once, laboratory tests showed that the performance of one of our new materials improved by a big step, but when applied to the model equipment, it was found that the material was corrosive to the matrix, which fundamentally negated the feasibility of the solution."
For Liu Yuanyuan and her colleagues, failures in experiments like this happen from time to time, but the frustration in their hearts is short-lived. "Because we're a very strong team, we're not fighting alone!" Everyone in the team has their own expertise in their respective fields, team members communicate with each other, collide ideas, and when they encounter problems, they will help come up with ideas and solve difficulties together.
"We are not afraid to increase the workload, we are not afraid to do too many experiments, we are afraid of not thinking of and verifying all the problems." We have to pick out the information we need in the complicated work, and then optimize the material. Just like the corrosion problem mentioned earlier, we have studied and tested a variety of corrosion mechanisms through in-depth research and testing, and finally found a solution, and our material can be used again! Liu Yuanyuan said excitedly.
"When it comes to process problems, our so-called big doctors, at the beginning, were really laymen, and the molds, processing, assembly, etc. involved were all learned from scratch, at which time I realized more deeply that doing aerospace material research requires engineering thinking."
In the process upgrade stage, Liu Yuanyuan's team will also go deep into the production line to communicate with skilled workers to supplement their detailed blind spots in specific operations and engineering applications. Once, it was thanks to the front-line workers who reminded a test mold in advance that the center of gravity and the sling rope were not in a straight line, and adjusted the process plan in time to avoid the damage caused by the mold to the surface of the material.
Liu Yuanyuan's team, the pre-research group of the Fifth Technical Department of the 306 Institute, is an innovation team with 17 doctors. As the leader of this team, she inherits the strict and meticulous work style of the older generation of astronauts, leads by example, and fully practices "zero defects" and "one time right" in her work; she insists on creating a good atmosphere for sharing and communication, so that team members from different professional backgrounds can learn from each other's strong points; she has formulated and improved mechanisms conducive to scientific research and innovation, so that every young scientific and technological worker can fully burst out of innovative potential... Under her leadership, the team's innovative achievements emerge in an endless stream - the aerogel materials developed have developed more than a dozen branches and more than two dozen products, which are being applied in weapons and equipment, deep space exploration, industrial insulation, building energy saving, new energy vehicles and other fields, and will have a broader application space in the future.
"Aerospace technology represents the most sophisticated technology in our country, and there are many areas that we have not yet covered. From my personal point of view, I still have many aspects of my ability. Liu Yuanyuan said that her colleagues around her have paid more than her, and there are countless stories of dedication and overcoming difficulties, and she is just a representative of them. In the future, she will continue to learn from her predecessors in aerospace and colleagues around her, continue to polish her professional and technical level, and be committed to making greater contributions to the aerospace industry.
Editor-in-Charge: Yimeng Yao