Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2026-02-24 Origin: Site
In high-end equipment sectors such as aerospace, automotive manufacturing, and new energy, the requirements for high-performance structural components in terms of strength, precision, lightweight design, and cost control are becoming increasingly stringent. Traditional casting and forging processes can hardly meet these multi-dimensional demands. As an advanced manufacturing technology integrating material preparation and component forming, powder metallurgy enables efficient mass production of high-performance structural components with its unique merits. Meanwhile, breakthroughs in key technologies have further expanded its application scope, making it one of the core supporting processes in the field of high-end manufacturing.
The core advantages of powder metallurgy lie in its precise matching with the forming requirements of high-performance structural components, achieving simultaneous improvements in performance and efficiency. Firstly, it boasts extremely high material utilization. Adopting near-net-shape technology that eliminates the need for complex post-machining, metal powder utilization can exceed 95%, greatly reducing material waste—especially suitable for forming valuable materials such as titanium alloys and superalloys. Secondly, it features strong forming flexibility, capable of producing complex, porous, and multi-material composite structural components that are difficult to manufacture via traditional processes. The parts also exhibit high dimensional accuracy and uniform, stable performance, satisfying the precision requirements of structural components for high-end equipment. Thirdly, it offers distinct energy-saving and consumption-reducing benefits: the production process eliminates high-temperature melting, with energy consumption accounting for only 30%–50% of traditional forging. Recycled scrap metal can also be reused for powder production, aligning with the trend of green manufacturing. In addition, the process enables mass production, effectively lowering the manufacturing cost of high-performance structural components and adapting to high-volume demand scenarios such as automotive parts and aerospace fasteners.
In recent years, driven by the escalating performance demands for structural components in high-end equipment, powder metallurgy has witnessed multiple breakthroughs in key technologies, overcoming bottlenecks of conventional processes. In powder preparation, the challenge of fabricating ultra-fine spherical powders has been resolved. Through gas atomization, plasma atomization, and other techniques, ultra-fine powders with uniform particle size and high purity are produced—for instance, the particle size of A100 alloy steel powder can be controlled at 7.3–20.8 μm, laying a foundation for high strength and toughness of structural components. In forming technology, advanced methods such as warm compaction and isostatic pressing are widely applied. Warm compaction increases part density to over 7.4 g/cm³, effectively improving powder flowability and forming density, and solving the problems of low density and insufficient strength in traditional cold-pressed parts.
In sintering technology, breakthroughs have been achieved in variable-temperature super-liquidus phase sintering (SLPS), spark plasma sintering (SPS), and other methods. Among them, the variable-temperature SLPS process elevates the density of A100 steel structural components to 99.4%, with tensile strength exceeding 1700 MPa. Featuring rapid heating and short sintering time, SPS enables efficient forming of nanomaterials and gradient materials. Furthermore, optimized post-treatment technologies effectively eliminate internal defects in components, further enhancing fatigue strength and wear resistance to meet the demands of extreme service environments such as aerospace.
The advantages and key technological breakthroughs of powder metallurgy drive high-performance structural components toward lightweight, high-precision, and high-reliability development. This not only cuts manufacturing costs for high-end equipment but also supports China’s technological independence and controllability in aerospace, new energy vehicles, and other fields. In the future, with the deep integration of powder metallurgy with intelligent manufacturing and additive manufacturing, it will continue to break performance limits, expand broader application scenarios, and inject new momentum into the high-quality development of the advanced manufacturing industry.
