On Sep 18th, 2019, Prof. Yi Hongliang’s team from the State Key Laboratory of Rolling and Automation at NEU (RAL) released the AluSlim® High-Toughness New-TypeAl-Si Coating Technology at the China Automobile Lightweight Conference (CALC), directly breaking up the 20-year patent monopoly by ArcelorMittall. The technology attracted widespread attentions from steel and automobile industries, which can be described as “a breaking news.”
Moreover, Easyforming Materials Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. (EfMaT, for short), a startup enterprise incubated by NEU, has transformed the team’s theory of “Embrittlement Caused by High Carbon between Al-Si Coating and Steel Matrix” into the technology of interface carbon-decreasing and toughening, and successfully conducted the batch trial production of high-toughness Al-Si coated hot stamping steel products throughMaanshan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. (Masteel, for short). This has also become one of the successful cases of NEU’s first batch of technology-incubated enterprises which managed to realize the transformation of scientific and technological achievements by the in-depth integration of industry, university and research. Why can this technology attract the attentions from the world? What’s behind the transformation of scientific and technological achievements promoted by the in-depth integration of industry, university and research? Recently, the reporter from World Materials came to EfMaT in Suzhou to interview Yi Hongliang, who is the professor of Northeastern University as well as the president and chief expert of EfMaT.
Prof.Yi Hongliang, State Key Laboratory of Rolling and Automation at NEU
Reporter:
What is the starting point of the theory of “Embrittlement Caused by High Carbon between Al-Si Coating and Steel Matrix”? What kind of economic and social benefits will be produced by the “AluSlim® high-toughness new-type Al-Si coating technology” formed by this theory?
Yi Hongliang:
Al-Si coated 1500MPa hot stamping steels are the most important material for automobile safety parts, and the annual amount of worldwide usage is nearly 4 million tons. The existing Al-Si coating technology is developed by ArcelorMittal from 1999 and gradually becomes monopolized. On the one hand, ArcelorMittal’s patent monopoly makes automobile manufacturers pay an additional cost of thousands of yuan per ton of Al-Si coated plates. On the other hand, at present, the bending toughness of hot stamping parts made of Al-Si coated plates by ArcelorMittal currently is in urgent need of being improved to further meet the requirements of the lightweight of automobile, and its risk of delayed fracture resistance also needs to be further reduced to raise the reliability in the manufacturing process. A lot of steel companies around the world have tried to crack this technology by ArcelorMittal to completely solve these problems, but there has been no break-through for many years.
Different from the common research and development, the theory of “Embrittlement Caused by High Carbon between Al-Si Coating and Steel Matrix” is based on a full grasp of basic theories such as physical metallurgy, materials science, production processes, and the technologies of the entire industrial chain from downstream to upstream. This theory points out that there is a large enrichment of carbon near the interface between the base material and the diffusion layer during the manufacturing of the Al-Si coated plate, and the high-carbon martensite is formed in the later cooling process leading to the reducing of product toughness. Based on this, we adopted several methods such as reducing the thickness of coating and optimizing the heating process in order to reduce the alloying between the base material and the coating as well as the thickness of the high-carbon martensite layer, which greatly raising the toughness of the Al-Si coating plate, dramatically improving the bending fracture strain and reducing the risk of delayed fracture. Furthermore, the combination of reducing the thickness of coating and optimizing the heating process shortens the heating time and effectively improves the efficiency of hot stamping.
As for the benefits, I would like to talk about a few data first. In 2019, we realized the industrial production of 1500 MPa Al-Si Coated Hot Stamping Steel Plate of High Toughness for the first time in Masteel Group. The bending toughness of the product is increased by 20%, which is the only product in the world that can meet the requirements of high toughness in General Motors New Material Standard GMW14400. The high-toughness coating parts that we produced for trial in Dongfeng (Wuhan) Industrial Co., Ltd. (Dongfeng Industrial, for short) have increased the collision performance by 28% and the risk of delayed fracture has also been greatly reduced. The coating corrosion resistance and other indicators are in line with the requirements of GMW14400. All these figures directly reflect the improvement of performance.
Reporter:
China has been advancing the transformation of scientific and technological achievements in recent years. What support have you received from the country, university and RAL in the process of the transformation of scientific and technological achievements?
Yi Hongliang:
From the national perspective, since the 19th National Congress of CPC, China has intensified its efforts to reform the scientific and technological system. In August 2015, the “Law on Promoting the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements of the PRC” was revised. In February 2016, the “Implementation of Promoting ‘the Law on Promoting the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements of the PRC’“ was issued. And in April 2016, the “Action Plan for Promoting the Transfer and Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements” was released, completing the “trilogy” the transformation of scientific and technological achievements. These have provided the support of national policy for establishing the EfMaT and promoting the transformation of scientific and technological achievements. In addition, EfMaT received a great support by the local government when finally settled in Suzhou Industrial Park. In terms of the university, Northeastern University embraces the characteristics and advantages of technological innovation, technology transfer, and industry-university-research cooperation. NEU devotes to serve the national strategy through industry-university-research cooperation and technological innovation, and transform scientific research into industry while also lead it to improve teaching. In order to implement the national policy on the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, accelerate the transformation of the university’s scientific and technological achievements, stimulate the innovation vitality of teachers and students, cultivate innovative and entrepreneurial talents, and make the university’s scientific and technological serve economic construction and social development better, Northeastern University took a quick respond and issued the “Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Management for the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements of Northeastern University” on November 24, 2016, which clarified the relevant measures for teachers to start businesses on the job. This adhered to the country’s policy of “whoever invests gets repay”, and fundamentally solved my difficulties at that time. Moreover, in the process of establishing EfMaT, Northeastern University used its technology to buy shares of 2.3 million yuan and rewarded me of 70% of the shares in accordance with the university’s policies and documents. This is a more specific and effective support. In terms of RAL, with the principle of “Provide valuable technologies to serve the country”, Academician Wang Guodong encouraged me to make breakthroughs in basic theories and innovations of “0 to 1”. He not only provided conditions for us in the basic research of the laboratory, but also coordinated the resources of all parties in the implementation of technology industrialization, which lays a solid foundation for the successful transformation of technology.
Reporter:
The development of AluSlim® high-toughness new-type Al-Si coating technology is a successful case of the in-depth integration of industry, university and research promoting the transformation of scientific and technological achievements. Can you talk about the relevant successful experience?
Yi Hongliang:
“AluSlim® high-toughness new-type Al-Si coating technology” was developed by the joint efforts from several institutions such as Northeastern University, EfMaT, Masteel, Dongfeng Industrial, GM China Academy of Sciences, etc.
First of all, our demand comes from the enterprises. Steel enterprises and car enterprises urgently need new technologies to break through the bottleneck of insufficient bending toughness of Al-Si coating hot stamping steel. Therefore, we put forward the innovative theory of “Embrittlement Caused by High Carbon between Al-Si Coating and Steel Matrix”. Northeastern University has conducted sufficient basic theoretical researches. EfMaT has invested the research with a lot of funds, engineering experiment platforms and R&D teams to carry out the basic researches such as hot stamping experiments, toughness evaluations and so on. In order to promote the transformation of technological achievements, EfMaT worked as a bridge and link through the process. At EfMaT, I set up an engineering R&D team composed of senior researchers from the world’s top automobile and steel companies, which perfectly transformed basic researches into engineering technologies by application. While leading the R&D of technology industrialization, we actively dredged the entire industrial chain consisting of steel companies, automobile companies and automobile parts manufacturing companies and pushed forward the promotion and application of technology in an all-round way.
However, the promotion of any technology depends on the close cooperation of the upstream and downstream industries. We have a clear division of labor with our partners. The basic research team from NEU and the engineering R&D team from EfMaT have formed a good partnership of technology and a zero-barrier cooperation in the entire industrial chain. Masteel is responsible for the controlling of production index and the batch industrial trial production of AluSlim®high-toughness new-type Al-Si coating products. Dongfeng Industrial is responsible for the stamping of the model of hot stamping plates and the trial production of later hot stamping parts. And GM China Academy of Sciences is specifically responsible for the evaluation of fracture resistance performance and coating corrosion resistance of the parts. The entire R&D process is interlinked and it really gathers the power of the entire industry chain to promote the technological innovation.
Reporter:
At present, the “AluSlim® high-toughness new-type Al-Si coating technology” has been released to the market. So, how will you promote its industrial application in the future?
Yi Hongliang:
Automobile high-strength steel is a key material applied for the lightweight of automobile, playing an important role in the development of automobile industry. However, the hot-stamping forming technology can make the ultra-high-strength steel have excellent plasticity, formability and hot forming property during the forming process and achieve a high-precision dimensional control. Therefore, complex parts can also be stamped at one time. Therefore, the hot forming technology has been and will be one of the important technologies of the lightweight of automobile for a long time in the future and the most economical and effective solution of lightweight. However, hot stamping coated plates are restricted by foreign patents and the cost of hot stamping parts usually exceeds 50%, which to a large extent restrains the application of ultra-high-strength hot-formed steels in automobile bodies in China and delays the development of the lightweight of automobile. Although we have released the “AluSlim high-toughness new-type Al-Si coating technology”, yet there is still a long way to go before the real market application. Recently, we are currently negotiating with large domestic and foreign steel and car companies, hoping to accelerate the engineering evaluation, so that more companies will start to try and apply this technology as soon as possible and the industrial application can be truly realized in the shortest time.
In May 2019, the GM North American Headquarter urged Masteel to prepare the complete technical data required for the certification of new-type steel, which marks the official launch of the certification. It shows that the technology is recognized by the international automobile tycoons. At present, many domestic and foreign automobile companies have started the verification of hot stamping steel products using this technology. We hope that batch applications can be realized in 2020.
In addition, our team successfully realized the large-scale industrial production of 2000 MPa ultra-high-strength steel in 201. Next, we hope to equip the 2000 MPa ultra-high-strength steel with the “AluSlim® high-toughness new-type Al-Si coating technology” to truly create a subversive technology.
Reporter:
We have known that you were promoted to the Professor of Northeastern University at the age of 33. Moreover, you were awarded the “Fund for Excellent Youth” of NSFC in 2017 and the 12th Science and Technology Leading Talents at Suzhou Industrial Park in 2018. Can you talk about your experience and future plans of scientific research?
Yi Hongliang:
In my opinion, to do a good job in scientific research, on the one hand, we must lay a solid foundation and concentrate on studying the basic theories; on the other hand, we must increase our practical experience and further grow up from actual technological application and production, which is the integration of industry, university and research promoted by the state. Of course, the more important thing is to be able to integrate all these knowledges, jump out of inherent models, and analyze the issues from a higher level.
In the future, I will insist on the technical research and development. While as a professor of NEU, I also hope that I can use my knowledge to improve the disciplinary education, so that my students can truly appreciate the charm of their disciplines, lay a solid foundation, and eventually grow into the scientific and technological talents beneficial for the steel industry and national construction. In this process, I hope that EfMaT can also play a role in developing new materials and even training more outstanding talents.
Group photo of Prof. Yi Hongliang’s team
