February 23, 2012: The Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) of Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) on February 22 said its plate mill has rolled out a fresh order of 54 tons of Ultra High Strength Special Steel Plates of 9.2 mm thickness that will be used for the main body of India's indigenous space launch vehicles such as Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) that are manufactured by India Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The plates were rolled in Plate Mill from slabs supplied by Mishra Dhatu Nigam Ltd (MIDHANI), the company said in a release.

Steel is widely used in construction of space shuttles along with metals like aluminium, titanium and other high grade materials. Such special grades of steel are made out of special alloys and are capable of withstanding metal fatigue which occurs due to tremendous changes in heart and atmospheric pressure on the spacecraft when it returns to orbit.

Special care was taken in Bhilai's Plate Mill for proper heating and soaking this grade as the steel requires eight hours of retention time inside the furnace. BSP had earlier rolled this special grade of plates for space application in 2009. The officials witnessing the production in plate mill have expressed confidence in Bhilai's capabilities for rolling out more such grade of plates for space applications in future.

Bhilai's plate mill that has been rolling the required grades for use in defence and space sector, has become a kind of one-stop shop for wide and thicker customised and special grade plates for meeting a variety of end usages in the power and energy sector, super-construction projects, ship building and manufacture of boiler and pressure vessels, heavy engineering machinery and equipment, pipelines for water, crude and gas transportation etc.

The product range of Bhilai's plate mill is wide and includes plates of 8 to 120 mm thickness, 1500 to 3200mm wide and in lengths up to 15 meters. Close to 50% of the total production from the plate mill is of the special steel variety. The mill has advanced facilities for ensuring high product quality i.e., Hydraulic Automatic Gauge Control, Plan View Rolling, On-line Ultra-Sonic Testing Machine, Normalizing Furnaces. Among such new and advanced facilities recently added are Heavy Duty Shear and an Edge marking with bar coding and decoding facility that is under commissioning.

Bhilai has collaborated with the Indian Navy to develop and supply DMR-249A (ABA) grade steel plates meant for use in constructing hull of the aircraft carrier warships of frigates. The collaboration with the Navy is expanding and BSP is also making steel (DMR 249B) for manufacture of submarines. These grades are specially toughened, warship-grade steel from Bhilai for use in constructing hull of the aircraft carrier warships or frigates and submarines.
Several projects of national importance are sourcing their requirement of special steel plates with the right properties and strength from Bhilai's Plate Mill. To meet the requirement of M/s BHEL, Bhilai produced for the first time 120 mm thick normalized ASTM A36 grade plates with ultrasonic testing for supply to M/s BHEL, Ranipet for construction of auxiliary structure of high capacity boilers. Another grade developed for M/s BHEL, Haridwar is the thicker gauge Boiler Quality plates in IS 2002 Gr.II in 120mm thickness for use in the Turbine pedestal of 500MW Thermal Power Plant.

Suzlon's windmills are being made with the required grade of plates from Bhilai. Indian Railways that gets all its rails in lengths of 13 metre, 26 metre and 130 and 260 metre from Bhilai also sources plates in SAILMA 300 HI grade of thickness up to 80 mm for its Diesel Locomotive Workshop from Bhilai. Big industrial houses like Thermax sources boiler quality plates for providing sustainable energy solutions. The Bangalore Water Supply Board has sourced huge quantities of plates from Bhilai for its 69 km pipeline to get Cauvery's water to the city.

It is worth mentioning that most of the new grades of special steel successfully developed and rolled by Bhilai in the last several years as part of its 'one new grade every month' product development programme have been plates. Out of the 12 new grades of special steel successfully developed and rolled by Bhilai steel plant in 2010-11, as many as nine were new grades of special steel plates rolled in the Plant's Plate Mill.

Among the new grades developed recently is one special grade for M/s BEML that is manufacturing coaches for the Delhi Metro. M/s IOTL is sourcing pressure vessel plates with superior impact toughness for horton spheres of ethylene storage vessel for a petrochemical project in Assam. In the current fiscal year, Bhilai has successfully developed and rolled out several new special grades of steel. These include corrosion-resistant grade of plate to be used in the manufacture of bogey frames for rail coaches, a new ASTM grade of plate for use in the manufacture of pressure vessel for a petrochemical project. M/s Siemens Transport Systems too is getting special steel plates with low temperature impact toughness to be used for manufacturing railway passenger bogies from Bhilai. Several other special steel grades of plates are in advanced stages of development. These include a dual-grade Boiler Quality plate for M/s GR Engineering for intermediate and low temperature application by boiler and pressure vessel manufacturers.

While Bhilai has 22.2% share in the market for plates in the country, the plant also exports boiler quality, ship building grades, thicker plates as well as mild steel grades and low carbon plates for earthmoving equipment to several European countries. The plant has supplied dual certification plates for export to Thyssen, Germany for use in different shipyards. An export grade plate has been developed and supplied for M/s Titagarh Wagon Ltd for manufacturing of high-speed light oil tank wagons for the French National Railways.

Source: ISMW