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Scientometric Review of Trends on the Mechanical Properties of Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing

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Abstract

Nowadays, the challenges of the industry increasingly demand the manufacture of complex shapes with great design flexibility without waste by 3D printing. Additive manufacturing, unlike traditional manufacturing techniques such as casting and machining, enables designers to rapid prototype while lowering operating costs and material waste during this process. In this way, understanding the current state of the literature related to additive manufacturing processes and the mechanical properties of 3D printed materials is of high importance to determine a research horizon in developing future works of this topic. In this paper, a bibliometric analysis, also named Scientometric science, was implemented. The tendencies and transcendental topics were determined using the Bibliometrix package for R and VOSviewer. Data were exported directly from the Scopus database with a search equation. The results showed that, of the 1271 documents analyzed, 2015 is a year where the research began its developing stage, with a growth rate of 20.8%. The USA resulted to be a leading country in publications followed by China and the UK. Likewise, it is observed that the author with the highest number of publications and h-index is C.B. Williams, followed by A.A. Zadpoor and J. Muller. Besides, the evolution in time of the keywords most used by researchers, and trends and research gaps in the study of additive manufacturing with the mechanical properties of the 3D printing materials are presented.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Research and Extension Division “DIE” of the Francisco de Paula Santander University Ocaña, Colombia. This work was supported by the research Grant 158-08-021.

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  1. Instituto Politécnico Nacional, SEPI-ESIME, U.P. Adolfo López Mateos, Zacatenco, 07738, Mexico City, Mexico

    R. A. García-León

  2. Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander Ocaña, Facultad de Ingenierías, Programa de Ingeniería Mecánica y Civil, Ocaña - Norte de Santander, 546552, Colombia

    R. A. García-León, J. A. Gómez-Camperos & H. Y. Jaramillo

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R.A. García-León was involved in methodology, investigation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, writing—original draft, writing, review and editing. J. Gomez-Camperos performed analysis tools, formal analysis, and other contributions. H.Y. Jaramillo contributed to data, formal analysis, and other contributions.

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Correspondence to R. A. García-León.

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This invited article is part of a special topical focus in the Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance on Additive Manufacturing. The issue was organized by Dr. William Frazier, Pilgrim Consulting, LLC; Mr. Rick Russell, NASA; Dr. Yan Lu, NIST; Dr. Brandon D. Ribic, America Makes; and Caroline Vail, NSWC Carderock.

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García-León, R.A., Gómez-Camperos, J.A. & Jaramillo, H.Y. Scientometric Review of Trends on the Mechanical Properties of Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 30, 4724–4734 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-021-05524-7

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