High performance-based intelligent manufacturing for heavy forgings of reactor pressure vessel

The following problems were exposed from design and manufacture process of reactor pressure vessel heavy forgings. (1) The properties of the sampling position cannot represent the performance and reliability of some forgings. (2) Large forgings design has the tendency of integration and maximization, the thickness of some forgings is beyond the critical hardening thickness of the steel. (3) The technical requirements of individual large forgings have the obvious mistake, e.g. the microstructures after. tempering should be ferrite + pearlite/sorbite/troostite. These situations may causesafety issues during potential catastrophic natural calamity. For this, the concept of high performance-based intelligent manufacturing (HPIM) was put forward to manufacture heavy forgings. There are two important parts in HPIM, the one is to create HPIM system which combined with digital production design (DPD), virtual material manufacturing (VMM) and performance prediction. and the virtual destruction (VD) to parallel calculation and iterative optimization, the ultimate goal is achieve a perfect combination of material propertiesandbearing stress field of the heavy forging. The other one is to establish the HPIM research and manufacturing center, which used computing tools, experimental tools, heavy forging production testing and large data statisticalinformatics method (LD) to ensure therequired performance of large forgings. (authors)