A bibliometric analysis of research in design for additive manufacturing

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand how Design for Additive manufacturing Knowledge has been developing and its significance to both academia and industry. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors use a bibliometric approach to analyse publications from January 2010 to December 2020 to explore the subject areas, publication outlets, most active authors, geographical distribution of scholarly outputs, collaboration and co-citations at both institutional and geographical levels and outcomes from keywords analysis. Findings The findings reveal that most knowledge has been developed in DfAM methods, rules and guidelines. This may suggest that designers are trying to learn new ways of harnessing the freedom offered by AM. Furthermore, more knowledge is needed to understand how to tackle the inherent limitations of AM processes. Moreover, DfAM knowledge has thus far been developed mostly by authors in a small number of institutional and geographical clusters, potentially limiting diverse perspectives and synergies from international collaboration which are essential for global knowledge development, for improvement of the quality of DfAM research and for its wider dissemination. Originality/value A concise structure of DfAM knowledge areas upon which the bibliometric analysis was conducted has been developed. Furthermore, areas where research is concentrated and those that require further knowledge development are revealed.

Scientometric Review for Research Patterns on Additive Manufacturing of Lattice Structures

“…The data collection for this study followed the already established procedure for bibliometric reviews. Different studies on AM have covered a range of technologies applied [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 ], hence it is necessary to have a strategy for the selection of the papers. Two criteria were used in the literature collection strategy: (1) contemporary and relevance: all publications from 2002 to 2022 were searched, and the papers were manually screened by carefully reading the keywords and abstracts; and (2) quality assurance: only peer-reviewed papers from journals were included because journal papers typically go through careful reviews to remove errors and mistakes.…”

“…These AM processes include material extrusion, material jetting, binder jetting, powder bed fusion, directed energy deposition, photopolymerization, and sheet lamination [ 76 , 77 ]. These processes are all used in additive manufacturing (AM) technologies.…”

“…They are procedures and techniques for using parts produced through additive manufacturing in production facilities and public spaces. Some state-of-the-art reviews also present advantages of additive manufacturing with related bibliometric analysis, but they did not consider lattice structures [ 77 , 78 , 79 ]. Generally, the advantages of additive manufacturing (AM) technology include the use of complex geometries, lighter structures, and the material’s ability to allow customization.…”

Investigating designers’ preferred learning media to design for additive manufacturing

“…Over the years, the knowledge base in Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) has continued to expand and there have been efforts to classify this knowledge into a coherent and structured manner, to make it easily accessible and comprehensible (Kumke et al, 2016: Pradel et al, 2018a: Obi et al, 2022. The dynamics involved in the maturity of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies leading to its adoption as a mainstream manufacturing process gives rise to not only the development of a coherent knowledge base, but a means of acquiring the knowledge (Obi et al, 2022). Generally, it has been established that learning to design can take place through various learning media (Yilmaz et al, 2014;Evans, 2015).…”

Work in Progress: Development of Educational Kit for Teaching Additive Manufacturing

“…Consequently, the increasing use of AM in the industry led to increased demand for workers with knowledge of AM (Asiabanpour, 2019). This generated awareness for research on Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) (Obi et al, 2022) and the need for AM education (Borgianni et al, 2022), especially in higher education (Borgianni et al, 2019;Prabhu, Miller, et al, 2020a;Stern et al, 2019), but also in primary and secondary education as well (Ford and Minshall, 2019;Pei et al, 2019). Ford and Minshall (2019) reviewed where and how AM is used in teaching education, showing that AM is nowadays used as an educational tool in various educational surroundings, from schools and universities to libraries and maker spaces.…”