Zirconium and its alloys have good dimensional stability, radiation resistance and corrosion resistance, so they have an important application prospect in aerospace, navigation, nuclear reactor and biomedical fields. However, pure zirconium and widely used zirconium alloys have low tensile strength, so improving the mechanical properties of zirconium and its alloys is the key to its successful application in structural parts. In this paper, the development of zirconium and its alloys in nuclear industry, chemical industry, medical treatment, aviation and navigation are briefly reviewed. In addition, this article also introduces the new Gao Qiangren zirconium alloy design and preparation, can be obtained in space detection, deep-sea exploration and high-speed railway department of zirconium alloys used in the special fields such as the best ingredients, and expounds the new Gao Qiangren zirconium alloy strengthening mechanism and its application in the field of nuclear power, chemical industry and aviation.
Compared with traditional metal elements such as iron, copper and nickel, zirconium has a lower density and a smaller coefficient of thermal expansion. In addition, zirconium also has a low thermal neutron absorption cross-sectional area (only 0.18×10-28 m2) and good corrosion resistance, which makes zirconium and its alloys have a very wide range of application prospects in the nuclear industry, aerospace and other special fields. At present, zirconium and its alloys have been widely used as cladding materials in nuclear reactors. Compared with stainless steel, zirconium and its alloys effectively reflect neutrons back inside the reactor, greatly saving uranium fuel; The zirconium alloy has good corrosion resistance in 300~400 ℃ high temperature and high pressure water vapor, which also enables the reactor to have a long service life. Therefore, the metallic element zirconium is known as the first metal of the atomic age. With the continuous development of China's aerospace, navigation and chemical industry, alloy steel and other traditional materials are increasingly unable to adapt to the special environment such as space and ocean. In recent years, many scientists at home and abroad have turned to aluminum matrix composites and light metal materials such as titanium alloy and zirconium alloy.
Zirconium alloy has been widely used in the nuclear industry because of its very low thermal neutron absorption cross-sectional area and good high temperature and high pressure corrosion resistance. The parts and components produced by zirconium alloy include fuel cladding tube, control rod guide tube, pressure tube, component box and some structural materials. France, America, Germany and Russia have developed a series of zirconium alloys for nuclear use. At present, Zr-2, Zr-4, Zr2.5Nb and newly developed zirconium alloys such as Zirlo, E635, M5 and NDA have been successfully applied in the nuclear industry. These newly developed zirconium alloys have lower radiation creep properties and better iodine stress corrosion resistance. In addition, they are able to meet the higher burn up requirements of the fuel assembly, extending the assembly life to 30 years.
