Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing: Toward Intellectualization and Industrialization

Abstract

With the rapid development of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology in the past 30 years, AM has been shifting from prototyping to advanced manufacturing of functional components in industry. Intellectualization and industrialization of AM process and equipment could be the bottlenecks to the wide industrial applications of AM technology in the future, which have been highlighted in this paper, aiming at describing the technological research roadmaps for the next 5 to 10 years. According to the data flow in the process and value chains of AM technologies, state-of-art of design methodology, material, process & equipment, smart structures, and applications in extreme scales and environments has been elaborated respectively. Some suggestions on potential challenges for research and development in AM technologies have been provided in each section, which would finally establish a critical technical platform for the future industrial innovation and entrepreneurship.