In fact, weathering steel is not a new material. China's rapid economic growth has led to exponential growth in the amount of construction around the world. Offshore oil platforms and seaport buildings began to be seen everywhere, and the world's demand for weathering steel became more and more urgent. In addition to today's increasingly serious air pollution, metal structures will inevitably face the baptism of acid rain. But all metals naturally begin to corrode from the moment they are put into use. With the increasing amount of metal, the corrosion of metal began to cause great losses to the national economy. According to incomplete statistics, the annual economic losses caused by steel structure corrosion account for 2%-4% of the GDP of the national economy. At present, the annual economic losses caused by structural corrosion reach up to trillions of dollars. This means that every year, an entire year's worth of hard work in The UK goes to waste because of metal rust.
The research and development and promotion of weathering steel can improve the durability of structure and greatly reduce the economic loss caused by corrosion. Therefore, China's weathering steel research at a good time, start quickly, and catch up very quickly.
Since the 1990s, in order to adapt to China's explosive development of infrastructure, break foreign monopoly and strive for a broader overseas market, researchers have turned their attention to the development of low-cost, high strength, higher corrosion resistance of new high-performance weathering steel, and achieved excellent results. Then steel developed in China does not contain nickel and chromium, but mainly contains copper and phosphorus, and a certain amount of metal elements such as vanadium, titanium, niobium and rhenium, which are rich in China. In this way, the quality is greatly improved and the cost is reduced by more than half, thus gaining the advantage of rolling steel in the international market.
Now, China has become a major producer and exporter of weathering steel. Especially in the field of bridge construction, China's weathering steels can not only meet the high strength, low flexural strength, low temperature toughness, weldability and thick plate uniformity required for long-span bridge steels, but also have corrosion resistance and can be used in various pollution environments. Can choose to besmear already, the surface stabilizes processing, also can simply ignore, bare directly use. Weathering steel is complemented by weather-welded materials and weather-resistant high-strength bolts, with relevant standards and specifications behind them. The "weather resistant family" established by Chinese people has greatly enhanced human's ability to use steel, making high durability a normal condition of steel structures.
