Explosion welding research on large-size ultra-thick copper-steel composites: a review

With extremely high-temperature reactions taking place inside high-temperature kilns, the cooling staves are at risk of damage due to high temperatures, material erosion, and wear. Therefore, materials with high strength and high heat transfer capacity are required to prepare cooling staves. Copper-steel composites combine the high strength of steel with the high heat transfer capacity of copper and are ideal for the production of cooling staves. For the preparation of large-size, ultra-thick copper-steel composites, only a few processes are capable of doing this. Explosion welding as a composite material preparation process is widely used in the preparation of composite materials. This paper provides a review of rolling, diffusion bonding, and explosion welding. The three processes are compared in terms of preparation principles, microstructure, and mechanical properties to show the advantages of explosion welding in the field of high-temperature kiln cooling stave preparation. Then, a brief review of the research progress of the explosion welding process and the explosion welding of multilayer composites. Finally, the future direction of research on cooling staves is foreseen. & COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).