"Black Gold" Carbon Fiber: New Material Wang Guoyao'S Star

Recently, some military and scientific and technological powers have focused on the "development of carbon fiber industry" and other related fields, launched plans to speed up the development of renewable carbon fiber materials, and set up innovative research institutions to focus on promoting the rapid development of six key technical fields, such as engineering nanotechnology and carbon fiber.

　　 Scientific exploration of "black gold" carbon fiber

The origin of carbon fiber can be traced back to 1860, and it was invented and patented by British Sir Joseph Swan in the production of electric lamp filament. It is a kind of fibrous carbon material, which is black and hard. It is a new type of material with greater strength than steel, less density than aluminum, more corrosion resistance than stainless steel, higher temperature resistance than heat-resistant steel, and conductivity like copper. It has comprehensive excellent properties such as electricity, heat and mechanics. Because of its difficult manufacturing technology and high practical value, it is known as "black gold" in the industry.

As a new generation of high-performance reinforcement fiber, carbon fiber has not only the essential characteristics of carbon materials, but also the softness and processability of textile fibers. The carbon fiber, which is several times thinner than the hair, and the matrix such as resin, carbon, ceramics, and metal, can be made through special composite molding process to obtain carbon fiber composites with excellent performance, which can be widely used in aviation, aerospace, energy, transportation, military equipment and other fields, and is an important material for national defense, military industry, and civil production and life.

　　 Difficult to make technology Complex and fine

In the 1950s, the United States took the lead in developing viscose based carbon fibers to solve key technical problems such as high temperature resistance and corrosion resistance of missile nozzles and warheads. In 1959, Akio Kondo of Japan invented polyacrylonitrile based carbon fiber. Carbon fiber has attracted great attention from military powers because of its outstanding performance in improving the performance of weapons and equipment in the military field. Subsequently, some countries focused on developing carbon fibers with higher performance and more varieties. Japan has successively broken through a series of key technical problems such as high strength and high modulus, making the carbon fiber composite developed by Japan unique Fatigue resistance And environmental adaptability, and its overall level is leading all the way.

Carbon fiber seems simple, but its manufacturing process is very complex. It is a systematic engineering integrating multidisciplinary, refined and high cutting-edge technologies, involving chemical industry, textile, materials Precision machinery The whole process includes thousands of high-precision control parameters, such as temperature and humidity, concentration, viscosity, flow, etc., which will seriously affect the performance and quality stability of carbon fiber if a little carelessness, so it is far beyond the ordinary process technology.

With the wide application of carbon fiber and composite materials today, large-scale production has become a major bottleneck in its industrial development. Although the principle of production at each level is the same, the difficulty of precise control of various process parameters is very different. Ten ton and hundred ton production lines cannot be simply copied to the kiloton level. For example, polymerization reaction generates a lot of heat, making it extremely difficult to control the temperature uniformity and stability. Because of this, only a few countries can stably produce high-performance carbon fiber, and the core technology is mainly controlled by Japanese and American giants for a long time. Among them, three Japanese companies account for three quarters of the world's carbon fiber production capacity, becoming the "Big Mac" in the industry.

　　 Strong, medium and strong national defense equipment transformed

According to foreign media reports, the first flight time of the F-35 fighter, which is superior to others, has been pushed again and again. One of the important reasons is that it is overweight. In order to solve this problem, Lockheed Martin took many measures, and finally adopted up to 35% carbon fiber composite materials to significantly reduce the weight of the body. So in a sense, it is carbon fiber composites that make the F-35 fighter.

Today, carbon fiber composites not only become an indispensable basic material to achieve high stealth performance, but also become an important symbol to measure the advanced performance of weapon systems. For example, due to the higher proportion of carbon fiber composites used in X-47B, Global Hawk, Global Observer, Westwind and other aircraft, their payload, endurance and survivability have achieved new breakthroughs.

One of the biggest characteristics of the active F-22 fighter is its good stealth performance, which is closely related to the extensive use of carbon fiber composites. In addition, F-117A fighter planes, B-2 stealth bombers, etc. also use carbon fiber absorbing materials, including Sweden's "Visby" class patrol ships, which are all made of composite materials, so they have advanced operational performance such as high stealth, high mobility, and long life.

The development of the aerospace field is even more penny pinching. For example, if the mass of solid rocket motor is reduced by 1 kg, the range can be increased by 16 km. Therefore, carbon fiber composites are widely used in the engine housings of American "Patriot" missiles, "Trident" II, German HVM supersonic missiles, French "Arian-2" rockets, Japanese M-5 rockets and other engines. In the future, carbon fiber is an important foundation for the development of advanced strategic weapons and equipment with miniaturization, high mobility, high precision and high penetration capability.

New high-performance carbon fiber composites, with better stability and reliability, are widely used in hypersonic aircraft, international space station, advanced satellites and other equipment systems. The US Department of Defense emphasized in the report of "Research on Materials for Defense Needs in the 21st Century" that "by 2020, only composite materials will have the potential to improve the performance of equipment by 20-25%".