Competitive Pattern of China’s Forging Industry and Development of Forging Manufacturers at Home and Abroad

Forging is a processing method that can make the blank or ingot produce partial or total plastic deformation under the action of pressure equipment and tools (dies) to obtain parts (or blanks) of certain geometric size and shape and improve their structure and performance. After forging, the metal material has good shape and size stability, uniform structure, reasonable fiber structure and the best comprehensive mechanical properties. The main bearing structure or secondary bearing structure in mechanical equipment is generally made of forgings, which are widely used in various fields of national economy and national defense industry. The main raw materials for forging are metal bars, ingots, etc. In the process of smelting, pouring and crystallization, these raw materials will inevitably produce defects such as air holes, shrinkage cavities and dendrites. Therefore, it is difficult for the casting process to produce parts that can withstand the impact or alternating stress in the working environment (such as transmission spindle, gear ring, connecting rod, track wheel, etc.). However, after forging, the structure and properties of metal bars or ingots can be effectively improved. At the same time, due to the plastic deformation and recrystallization of metal, the coarse grains can be refined to obtain a dense metal structure, thus improving the mechanical properties of forgings. In addition, the impact resistance of forgings can also be improved if the force bearing direction and fiber structure direction of the parts are correctly selected during part design. Therefore, forging is essentially a processing process that uses plastic deformation of metal to change the shape and performance of metal blanks to become qualified forgings. Its fundamental purpose is to use external load (impact load or static load) to make metal blanks plastic deformation through forging equipment or dies, so as to obtain forgings of required shape and size, and at the same time make the mechanical properties and internal organization of forgings meet certain technical requirements.
The upstream of the forging industry mainly includes various metal material smelting enterprises, such as carbon steel, stainless steel, alloy steel, superalloy, titanium alloy, aluminum alloy, etc. The supply capacity and technical level of upstream raw materials directly affect the development level of the forging industry. The raw material cost accounts for a high proportion of the main business cost of forging enterprises, so the fluctuation of raw material price has a greater impact on the product price.
Forging products, as the key basic components necessary for the equipment manufacturing industry, are mainly downstream complete equipment manufacturers in aviation, aerospace, shipbuilding, electric power, petrochemical and other machinery industries, and are ultimately used in various related industries of the national economy and national defense industry. The requirements of the downstream industry on the precision, performance, life, reliability and other technical indicators of forging products dominate the technological trend of the forging industry. At the same time, the prosperity of the downstream industry also directly determines the demand and market capacity of the forging industry. In addition, in high-end equipment manufacturing fields such as aviation, aerospace, shipbuilding, power and petrochemical, national policy guidance and national investment scale also have a significant impact on market demand. The market development prospect of forging industry is closely related to the development of downstream application industry and national investment.