Bibliometric Analysis-Based Review of Fused Deposition Modeling 3D Printing Method (1994-2020)

Abstract

This study aimed at the detailed bibliometric analysis (BA) of fused deposition modeling (FDM) to understand the trend and research area. Web of Science database was used for extracting data using keywords, and 2793 documents were analyzed. From the analysis, the most influential and productive authors, countries, sources, and so on were identified and corresponding interrelations were represented by a three-field plot. Lotka's law was derived for author productivity and its reliability was verified by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test. Bradford's law was used for identifying the core sources contributing to the field of FDM. From the trend topic analysis, it was found that initially the research was focused upon removing error related to deposition as well as part orientation, but with the course of time, it diversified to include topics such as optimization of printing parameters, materials, and applications. Based on the inferences from BA, the article also discusses on current research trend and highlights certain future areas for research work.

Keywords: 3D printing; additive manufacturing; bibliometric analysis; fused deposition modeling; fused filament fabrication.

FIG. 1.

ISO/ASTM 52900:2015 (International Organization for Standardization/American Society for Testing and Materials) Classification of additive manufacturing highlighting FDM. FDM, fused deposition modeling.

FIG. 2.

FDM or material extrusion process.

FIG. 3.

Flow diagram representing process flow of 3D printing model using FDM printer, each subsequent process acts as an input to the next step. 3D, three-dimensional.

FIG. 4.

Annual production over the years in WOS (x axis shows the number of articles and y axis shows the year). WOS, Web of Science.

FIG. 5.

Annual average citation of documents over the years (x axis shows the average number of citations of documents and y axis shows the year).

FIG. 6.

Author productivity and Lotka's law (x axis represents the percentage of authors, while y axis represents the number of documents written by them, as the number of documents increases, the percentage of authors contributing the same decreases).

FIG. 7.

Sources impact using Bradford's Law (x axis represents the number of articles, while y axis represents the sources contributing the same).

FIG. 8.

Three-field plot representing authors, countries, and sources (Sankey diagram representing three distinguished fields).

FIG. 9.

Three-field plot representing author, university, and countries.

FIG. 10.

Co-occurrence network of keywords (size of node represents the frequency of keywords).

FIG. 11.

Growth of keyword plus over the years (represents the occurrences of keyword plus over the years).

FIG. 12.

Three-field plot representing authors, keyword plus, and countries.

FIG. 13.

Bibliometric coupling of top 20 countries having highest citations (size of node represents the link strength of countries).

FIG. 14.

Trend topics over the years (represents the logarithmic frequency of the topic trend over the years).