Casting refers to pouring molten metal into the mold, cooling and forming to form a casting that meets the relevant mechanical requirements. Its manufacturing process is called casting. Casting not only has a history of thousands of years, but also in modern manufacturing industry, casting is still the most front-end industrial foundation in manufacturing industry and plays an important role in industrial development. Cast iron is a professional classification in casting. According to different casting metal materials, the casting industry can be divided into cast iron, cast steel, non-ferrous metals, etc. The cast iron industry has a wide range of industries and is highly related to all walks of life. The upstream is mainly raw materials such as pig iron and scrap steel, and the downstream is manufacturing industries such as automobile, power generation equipment and mechanical equipment. In addition, cast iron occupies a leading position in the. In 2018, the output of cast iron in China accounted for 70.5%, of which gray cast iron and nodular cast iron accounted for 41.8% and 28.7% respectively, and maintained a growth trend.
Wind power castings are mainly nodular iron castings, which belong to the subdivision of casting products in the field of power generation equipment in the cast iron industry. With the rapid development of China’s wind power industry, wind power has developed from the introduction of foreign 1.5MW wind turbine technology to the independent research and development of high-power wind turbine power generation equipment with 4MW onshore wind power and 10MW offshore wind power. The rapid development of wind power industry is inseparable from the development of wind power casting manufacturing technology. In 2003, China introduced 1.5MW fan technology. The hub castings and main shaft bearing seat castings belong to the high-grade nodular cast iron materials of European standard EN. There are no production suppliers in China. There are few largeproduction enterprises in China, and they do not have the ability to produce this kind of nodular cast iron. This means that the wind power casting market is still blank in China. China’s large state-owned enterprises and private enterprises with high market sensitivity found this huge market and quickly and gradually set foot in and invest in the wind power casting market.
With the continuous breakthrough of wind power casting manufacturing technology and the continuous change of wind power casting market, it brings great challenges to the development of ZHY casting. Since 2008, a number of professional wind power casting foundries with annual output of 80000 tons, 100000 tons and 200000 tons have been built and expanded in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. From the perspective of domestic wind power casting capacity, it fully meets the domestic wind power casting market with overcapacity. At the same time, with the continuous promotion of policies related to China’s clean energy construction, the price competition of domestic wind turbine is fierce and declining year by year, which has brought great pressure to parts suppliers.