The icebreaker "Xuelong 2" recently set sail from Dalian to carry out my country's 16th comprehensive Arctic Ocean expedition. As the exclusive supplier of steel for key components of the vessel, HBIS Group Wugang Company's high-end heavy plates once again demonstrate its core strength in the field of polar equipment. "Xuelong 2" is my country's first domestically built polar icebreaker and the world's first research vessel to adopt bow and stern dual-direction icebreaking technology. It has the capability to continuously break through 1.5 meters of ice plus 0.2 meters of snow, and can penetrate 20-meter-thick first-year ice ridges in polar regions, meeting the needs of navigation and operations in unlimited areas.

Polar vessels constantly face the challenges of ice floes and extreme low temperatures. The steel used must maintain high strength, toughness, impact resistance, and crack resistance in environments ranging from -50 to -60 degrees Celsius, a technical standard far exceeding that of ordinary ocean-going vessels. To overcome this challenge, Wugang Steel established a dedicated R&D team to systematically tackle the issues of ultra-low temperature impact toughness and resistance to lamellar tearing. They optimized the entire process from smelting and rolling to heat treatment, innovatively developing a precise composition control system and a special heat treatment process, which passed stringent certifications from classification societies. Subsequently, the team optimized mass production processes to ensure stable product performance and on-time delivery, laying a reliable foundation for domestically produced polar steel.

Wugang's CCSEH36 high-strength Z-axis polar marine steel plates have been successfully applied to key components of the "Xuelong 2" icebreaker, including the outer side plating, icebreaking reinforced deck, and ice-resistant load-bearing frame, which bear the greatest stress in the ice zone. This effectively addresses the shortcomings of ordinary marine steel, such as its susceptibility to cracking at low temperatures and insufficient impact resistance, achieving domestic substitution for polar hull steel. In addition, Wugang also provided several high-end steel grades, including 08Ni3DR, 06Ni9DR, and 15MnNiMoDR, for the ship's construction. Since 2014, Wugang has been deeply involved in polar shipbuilding materials, having exclusively supplied steel for only two polar heavy-duty deck transport vessels and the first polar condensate tanker globally. It has also contributed to the localization of key equipment for the Yamal LNG project, continuously providing high-performance steel materials for polar equipment in my country and globally.