Advances in Additive Manufacturing: Materials, Design and Applications towards Sustainability
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Products and Services".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2023) | Viewed by 2552
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Recent advances in additive manufacturing (AM), in essence, have taken the field of advanced manufacturing by storm. The cheap and easy availability, as well as maturity, of related technologies has enabled additive manufacturing to be a viable solution for end-use parts and tooling across a range of sectors, from aerospace to health and from metalworking to construction. This has become possible because of the advantages provided by additive manufacturing, such as enhanced product performance, design freedom, waste reduction, near net shape manufacturing, etc.
As much as AM is being favored over conventional manufacturing, there are many questions that remain unanswered, especially from the point of view of sustainability. Where a simple and most powerful attribute of AM is that it enables us to make parts that are conventionally not possible, a paradox exists that parts made through AM have a bigger environmental footprint, as the AM materials must be extensively processed before they are put to 3D printing. Another grey area exists from the point of view of design, where high-value complex parts that are ideal candidates for additive manufacturing are often a challenge to design, produce, and verify, as the AM process chain relies upon a wide range of non-AM processes to achieve a finished part, hence jeopardizing the sustainability of the whole process and posing a huge challenge for AM technology in the long run. Finally, these challenges cumulatively pose a challenge of limited applications of AM processes because of narrow material choices and cumbersome design processes, thus posing a big question in terms of the suitability and sustainability of AM processes.
Through this Special Issue, we will strive to see how additive manufacturing experts are striving to mitigate these challenges and thus making contributions towards making the process more sustainable and far-reaching in terms of three aspects, i.e., materials, design, and applications.
This Topic Collection is focused on breakthroughs, procedures and practices, and advances in the general area of additive manufacturing. Submissions are encouraged from, but not limited to, the following general areas:
- Sustainable materials for additive manufacturing;
- Design tools and practices for difficult-to-manufacture parts through additive manufacturing and their sustainability spectrum;
- The enhancement of applications of additive manufacturing;
- Sustainability analysis of existing additive manufacturing processes and their components;
- Environmental footprint analysis of materials used in additive manufacturing processes.
Dr. Malik Muhammad Nauman
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- sustainable materials selection
- environmental footprint
- sustainable design tools and practices
- application enhancement of additive manufacturing
- challenges for additive manufacturing
