The C919 test flight mission has been successfully completed, and the titanium industry chain has broad market prospects

On July 23rd, COMAC announced that six test planes of the C919 large passenger aircraft have successfully completed all flight tests and are now fully committed to evidence collection. This is a crucial milestone in the development of the C919 large passenger aircraft project.

The C919 large passenger aircraft is a large jet civilian aircraft with independent intellectual property rights in China, and currently has a total of 815 orders from 28 customers. By 2040, China is expected to add an average of 418 new passenger planes per year, including 312 single aisle passenger planes. Assuming that the domestic market share of C919 will reach 1/3 in the future, calculated at RMB 653 million per aircraft, the average annual sales of C919 are approximately RMB 67.91 billion. With the continuous improvement of domestic aviation industry technology, the large aircraft industry chain is driving the overall high-end development of the manufacturing industry, which is expected to give birth to huge space.

Titanium alloy is widely used in aircraft airframes and engines, and is the most localized advanced material on the C919.

Compared with major aviation metals such as aluminum and nickel, titanium is the only material widely used in aircraft fuselage and engines, with good strength, heat resistance, corrosion resistance, elasticity resistance, and formability. Moreover, due to the similar electrode potentials between titanium and carbon fiber composite materials, it has become the only connecting material for composite materials and is widely used in aviation fasteners.

The front fuselage pressure plate, nose skin, suspension, central wing edge strip, tail wing joint, wing rail and other parts of the C919 aircraft are all made of titanium alloy, with a total usage of 9.3% of the fuselage structure weight. The C919 aircraft has selected six titanium alloy grades, including low strength and high plasticity, medium strength and medium toughness, medium strength and high toughness, high strength and high toughness, and system materials. The product forms include forgings, thick plates, thin plates, profiles, pipes, wires, etc.

At the same time, titanium alloy is the most localized advanced material on C919, and both Baosteel Group and Baosteel Group have materials used in large aircraft. Western Superconducting Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy has also passed COMAC qualification certification.

The consumption of C919 titanium materials is about 3.92 tons per aircraft. Assuming that 1200 C919 aircraft can be manufactured in the next 20 years, it is expected to bring in a demand for 4700 tons of aviation titanium materials without considering the loss rate, and the market space is broad.