The Institute of Metals at the Chinese Academy of Sciences made the drill pipe for the Chang 'e-5 lunar drill

On December 2, the goddess of the moon and five lander ascenders combination drill down on the moon, sampling and packaging work, including the moon drilling sampling mechanism of key parts, drill pipe and its structure was developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences institute of metal Ma Zongyi team sic particle reinforced aluminium matrix composite materials, its light weight, high rigidity, high strength and wear resistance, etc, to satisfy the chang 'e no. 5 in sampling requirements of harsh working conditions on the surface of the moon.

China's lunar exploration program consists of a three-step strategy of "circling," "landing," and "returning."The Chang 'e-5 probe is China's first lunar sampling and return probe in charge of the "sampling and return" mission of the third phase of the Chang 'e project.The main task is to collect lunar samples and return them to Earth, so as to fully realize the "three-step" strategic goal of the lunar exploration project.The sampling mechanism is equipped with a 2.5-meter-long deep-hole drilling sampler to drill into the lunar soil for sampling and sending it to the ascender.Among them, when the drill pipe needs to drill deep into the lunar soil, the requirements for materials are more stringent, and the conventional metal materials can not meet the preparation requirements.

Aluminum matrix composites have excellent properties such as low density, high strength, high modulus and wear resistance, etc. They are ideal materials to replace steel, titanium, aluminum and other traditional metals for drilling pipe fabrication.However, the traditional aluminum matrix composites have poor strength and toughness matching, and their stability and reliability cannot meet the demanding working environment of drilling and production mechanism and the quality requirements of "foolproof".Ma Zongyi's team developed aluminum matrix composite extrusion bars, forgings and thick-walled pipes with high strength and toughness through the development of large-size aluminum matrix composite ingot and multi-pass deformation processing technology, which greatly improved the material performance and stability.

Especially for the material of drill pipe material in high orientation microstructure design, at the same time of guarantee abrasion resistance, high strength plastic material matching, successively broke the inner hole of composites and high precision, high linearity processing, heat treatment reinforcement and straightening, the key techniques such as the development of drill pipe can be comparable to steel, wear resistance and strength to achieve weight loss 65%, solved the soil pipe "no material available, there are difficult to processing".It has provided important support for the successful completion of the Chang 'e-5 drilling and mining task.