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Blast furnace ironmaking is a core process in steel production, where key components are subjected to extreme conditions such as high temperature, high pressure, corrosion, and abrasion. Traditional single materials often fail to meet the demands of long service life and high efficiency. clad plate technology has emerged as an effective solution. By metallurgically bonding two or more materials with complementary properties, clad plate achieve synergistic improvements in thermal conductivity, strength, corrosion resistance, and wear resistance.
The lower shaft, belly, and bosh of a blast furnace experience extremely high heat flux and severe burden abrasion. Although traditional copper cooling staves offer excellent thermal conductivity, they suffer from high thermal deformation, poor wear resistance, and high cost. Copper-steel clad plate, manufactured by explosive welding, combine the high thermal conductivity of oxygen-free copper with the high strength of steel, forming a high-performance clad plate.
Typical copper-steel clad plate structures include the "copper hot face + steel cold face" configuration and the "steel-copper-steel" sandwich structure. The sandwich structure achieves a high-strength metallurgical bond through two explosive welding steps. This clad plate maintains excellent thermal conductivity while significantly enhancing overall rigidity and hot-face wear resistance.
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Copper-Steel Composite Cooling Stave
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Position of Cooling Plate
Cooling staves manufactured with copper-steel clad plate exhibit significantly better heat transfer performance than traditional cast steel staves. The thermal conductivity of pure copper reaches 380 W/(m·K), approximately ten times that of cast steel. The hot-face temperature of such clad plate cooling staves is about 180°C, approximately 520°C lower than that of cast steel staves, which facilitates rapid and stable slag layer formation.
In terms of thermal deformation resistance, copper-steel clad plate also show outstanding performance. Studies indicate that the thickness-direction thermal deformation of a copper-steel clad plate is only half that of a pure copper stave, effectively preventing water pipe fracture caused by excessive deformation. Furthermore, the sandwich structure clad plate achieves an annual wear rate of only 25.9% of that of traditional copper cooling staves, while the cooling water pipes experience zero wear due to the protective steel panel. In terms of manufacturing cost, the copper-steel clad plate costs approximately 80% of a pure copper stave, offering significant economic benefits.
Industrial applications in multiple large blast furnaces have demonstrated that cooling staves made of copper-steel clad plate can effectively withstand harsh conditions in high-heat-flux zones. After installing clad plate cooling staves, the blast furnace utilization coefficient significantly increases, the fuel ratio decreases markedly, the cooling stave surface temperature drops by about 25%, the slag layer stabilizes, and the furnace operation period is greatly extended. The copper-steel clad plates successfully solves the technical problems of insufficient heat transfer capacity, easy cutting of water pipe roots, and severe wear.
Hot blast furnace shells are subjected to high temperature, pressure fluctuations, and corrosive media, making the welds and base metal susceptible to stress corrosion fatigue cracking. Analysis indicates that corrosive elements such as S and Cl cause pitting and stress concentration on the inner shell surface, which are major causes of cracking. To address this issue, 904L clad plate are applied in the high-temperature zones of hot blast furnaces.
904L is a low-carbon, high-chromium, high-nickel, high-molybdenum super-austenitic stainless steel with excellent resistance to uniform corrosion, pitting, intergranular corrosion, crevice corrosion, and stress corrosion cracking. By using 904L as the cladding layer and bonding it to a Q345C or Q355R（Equivalent to A572 Grade 50 or A516 Grade 70）carbon steel backing layer, the resulting clad plate combines the corrosion resistance of stainless steel with the mechanical strength and workability of carbon steel.
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Hot blast Stove
Industrial applications have proven that using 904L clad plate for hot blast furnace shells significantly reduces inner wall corrosion and fundamentally controls weld cracking. The application of clad plate addresses the root cause of stress corrosion fatigue cracking in furnace shells, greatly improving equipment operational stability and reducing maintenance frequency and costs.
The application of clad plate technology in key components of blast furnace steelmaking has achieved remarkable results. Copper-steel clad plate in blast furnace cooling staves achieve synergistic improvements in thermal conductivity, thermal deformation resistance, wear resistance, and cost efficiency. 904L clad plate in hot blast furnace shells effectively inhibit corrosion cracking and extend equipment life. clad plate materials and their associated welding processes provide reliable technical support for the safe, efficient, and long-service-life operation of blast furnace steelmaking.
Fugo Tech is focused on the manufacturing of clad metal plate and distributes the Stainless Steel, Titanium, Nickel Alloy, Zirconium and other non-ferrous metal pipes, fittings, and flanges.
