What are New Military Materials?

The World Platinum Investment Association (WPIC) said recently that carmakers are accelerating reductions in palladium use and increased use of platinum due to concerns about Russian palladium supplies. However, it still expects a significant surplus in the platinum market this year.

Palladium is used by carmakers in tailpipe emissions systems to reduce carbon emissions.  While carmakers prefer palladium for catalytic converters, they are turning to platinum, which is cheaper than palladium, to save costs.

Russia accounts for about 25-30% of the world's palladium supply and 8-10% of its platinum supply.

There is no sign that western sanctions against Russia have restricted palladium exports since the conflict escalated in February, but as the conflict continues, more companies could boycott The Russian metal and governments could impose restrictions.

Platinum is currently trading at about $950 an ounce, about half the price of palladium.  Automakers use about 2.5 million to 3 million ounces of platinum and about 8.5 million ounces of palladium each year.

For the year as a whole, platinum supply will be 5 percent lower than in 2021 and demand 2 percent higher, with the automotive sector seeing a 16 percent increase due to increased light vehicle nickel alloy are still very uncertain.

New military materials are widely used in aviation, aerospace, weapons, ships, and other fields.
 
Mg alloy
As the lightest engineering metal material, magnesium alloy has a series of unique properties such as light specific gravity, high specific strength and stiffness, good damping and thermal conductivity, strong electromagnetic shielding ability, and good vibration damping, which greatly meet the needs of aerospace, modern weapons and equipment, and other military fields.

Magnesium alloy has many applications in military equipment, such as tank seat frames, vehicle length mirrors, gun length mirrors, gearbox boxes, engine filter seats, inlet, and outlet water pipes, air distributor seats, oil pump housing, water pump housing, oil heat exchanger, oil filter housing, valve chamber cover, breathing apparatus, and other vehicle parts; Tactical air defense missile support cabin and aileron skin, wall, strengthening frame, rudder plate, frame, and other missile and arrow parts; Fighters, bombers, helicopters, transport planes, airborne radar, ground-to-air missiles, carrier rockets, satellites, and other spacecraft aircraft components. Magnesium alloy has the characteristics of lightweight, good specific strength and stiffness, good vibration damping performance, electromagnetic interference, and strong shielding ability, which can meet the requirements of military products for weight reduction, noise absorption, shock absorption, and radiation protection.  It occupies a very important position in aerospace and national defense construction and is the key structural material of aircraft, satellites, missiles, fighter and combat vehicles, and other weapons and equipment.



Aluminum alloy 
Aluminum alloy has always been one of the most widely used metal structure materials in the military industry. Aluminum alloy material has the characteristics of low density, high strength, and good processing performance, as a structural material, because of its excellent processing performance, can be made into various sections of the profile, pipe, high reinforcement plate, etc., to give full play to the potential of the material, improve the stiffness and strength of the component. Therefore, aluminum alloy is the first choice of lightweight structural material for weapon lighting. 
 
The development trend of aluminum alloy is to pursue high purity, high strength, high toughness, and high-temperature resistance. The aluminum alloy used in the military industry mainly includes aluminum-lithium alloy, aluminum-copper alloy, and aluminum zinc magnesium alloy.  The new aluminum-lithium table gold applied in the aviation industry is expected to reduce the weight of aircraft by 8%~15%. Aluminum-lithium alloys are also candidate structural materials for space vehicles and thin-walled missile shells.  With the rapid development of the aerospace industry, the research focus of al-li alloy is still to solve the problem of poor toughness and cost reduction in a thickness direction.
 
Structural ceramics 
The commonly used structural ceramic materials mainly include aluminum oxide, lead oxide, silicon nitride, silicon carbide, aluminum nitride, and its composite materials.  Structural ceramics are widely used in the field of national defense and military industry because of their high strength, high hardness, high-temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, and wear resistance.
Ceramic materials are the fastest developing high-tech materials in the world today. It has developed from single-phase ceramics to multi-phase composite ceramics. Structural ceramics have a good application prospect in the military industry because of their excellent properties such as high-temperature resistance, low density, wear resistance, and low thermal expansion coefficient. The high hardness and wear resistance of structural ceramics can be used to prepare ceramic cutting tools, ceramic bearings, bulletproof armor, various valves, wear-resistant linings, sealing rings; High-temperature ceramic heat exchangers, automobile exhaust filters, and gas turbine high-temperature overcurrent components can be prepared by using the high-temperature resistance of structural ceramics. The transparency of structural ceramics can be used to prepare transparent lamp tubes and missile window materials. 
 


Ultra-high strength steel 
For ultra-high-strength steel the yield strength and tensile strength is more than 1200MPa and 1400MPa steel, it is to meet the requirements of aircraft structure of high specific strength materials and research and development. Ultra-high strength steel not only has high tensile strength but also has certain plasticity and toughness, small notch sensitivity, high fatigue strength, certain corrosion resistance, good process performance, in line with resources and low price, etc., so it is more and more widely used in the aviation industry.  Ultra-high strength steel is used to make rocket engine casings, aircraft fuselage skeletons, skin and landing parts, as well as high-pressure vessels and some conventional weapons.  The use of steel in aircraft has decreased due to the expansion of titanium alloys and composite materials, but the key load-bearing components in aircraft are still made of ultra-high-strength steel. At present, the international representative of the low alloy ultra-high-strength steel 300M, is a typical aircraft landing gear steel. In addition, low alloy ultra-high-strength steel D6AC is a typical solid rocket engine housing material. The development trend of ultra-high-strength steel is to improve toughness and corrosion resistance while ensuring ultra-high strength. 
 
Advanced superalloys 
Superalloy in 600~1200℃ high temperature can withstand certain stress and has oxidation resistance or corrosion resistance of alloy, with high-temperature strength, good oxidation resistance and corrosion resistance, good fatigue performance, fracture toughness, and other comprehensive properties are widely used in aviation, aerospace, petroleum, chemical industry, ship an important material. 
 
According to the matrix elements, superalloys are divided into iron base, nickel base, cobalt-base, and other superalloys. The use temperature of iron base superalloy can only reach 750~780℃ in general, for heat resistant parts used at higher temperatures, the use of nickel base and refractory metal-based alloy. Nickel-based superalloys play a very important role in the whole field of superalloys. They are widely used to manufacture the hottest parts of aviation jet engines and various industrial gas turbines. If the 150MPA~100H durable strength as the standard and the current nickel alloy can withstand the highest temperature of more than 1100℃, and nickel alloy is about 950℃, iron-based alloy less than 850℃, that is, nickel-based alloy correspondingly higher than 150℃ to 250℃ or so. So, they call nickel alloy the heart of the engine. At present, in advanced engines, nickel alloy has accounted for half of the total weight, not only turbine blades and combustion chambers, but also turbine disks, and even the last several compressor blades began to use nickel alloy. Compared with iron alloy, the advantages of nickel alloy are higher working temperature, stable structure, less harmful phase, and oxidation resistance to corrosion.  Compared with cobalt alloy, nickel alloy can work at higher temperatures and under stress, especially in moving blades. 
 
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Because of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, there is a shortage of natural gas supply. At the same time, other renewable energy sources cannot produce enough electricity, so electricity prices have soared in many countries of the world. For this reason, I assume the supply and prices of the nickel alloy would keep being influenced by the high energy prices.

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