Recently, a batch of 8mm thick ship steel plate rolled off the production line at Bao Gang United Steel's thin plate plant. This marks the first time the plant has achieved mass production of ship steel plate of extremely thin specifications.
With the booming development of the global marine economy and the accelerated trend of intelligent and large-scale ships, the demand for high-end hull structural steel in the shipbuilding industry is also continuously increasing, and the ship steel plate market is highly competitive. Thin-gauge ship steel plate is mainly used in the superstructure of ships, requiring strict control of thickness tolerances and high requirements for strength and toughness. The production of such products faces technical challenges such as precision in plate shape control, performance stability, welding deformation control, and adaptability to extreme environments. The production is quite difficult, but it has a good market prospect.
Ship steel plate has always been one of the main products of the wide and thick plate production lines of thin plate mills. In recent years, the factory has fully leveraged its production line advantages to develop new ship steel plate products. To date, it has obtained certifications from seven classification societies, giving it a passport to sell to domestic and international markets. The 8mm ship plate steel produced in this batch is an important component of the export orders that were recently secured.
The billet size of 8mm ship steel plate is at the "extreme edge" of the conventional production size of wide plate casting machines in thin plate plants. It is a small size for the production line and requires a high degree of coordination among various process links, making production extremely difficult. Faced with extreme challenges, the thin plate plant organized a team of key technical personnel from steelmaking, continuous casting, equipment, and planning to tackle the problem. They conducted technical simulations, planned casting schemes, and formulated emergency plans. By adopting the "gradient cooling + dynamic casting speed" technology and making slight adjustments to the cooling rate, they achieved "precise balance" in the solidification of molten steel. The resulting billet had excellent surface quality, uniform internal structure, and all indicators met the first-class product standard. At the same time, the double-stand rolling process was optimized to reduce the production cost per ton of steel while ensuring product quality. Ultimately, the first batch production of ultra-thin specification ship steel plate was successfully achieved. The rolling process was stable, and the product performance met customer requirements.