Knowledge mapping of 4D printing technologies in computer engineering

ABSTRACT

Four-dimensional (4D) printing has received an amplified consideration in the research community for fabrication and manufacturing in industry, medical field, and smart flood management. Disruptive technologies such as Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and 4D printing are highly recommended during disaster management activities. The 4D printing technology is an evolving field that is an advancement of three-dimensional printing technologies in which the materials are programmed to change shape over time responding to external stimulus without human intervention, thereby adding a fourth dimension. The technology had a great impact during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and flood management activities. This paper, with the aim of a scientometric review, recognizes the recent research hotspots, trends, and worldwide scope of 4D printing for the period of 2007-2021. The bibliographic data fetched from the Scopus in comma-separated values format is used in the study for extracting the masked information by discussing the in-depth visualization of the attributes of the index documents. The study examines the growth of publications, subject categorizations, global distributions, citation analysis, and the influence of the institutions and authors using the bibliographic data. VOSviewer, a java-based tool, is used to study the keyword co-occurrence, which yields hotspots and emerging trends in the various applications of 4D printing, including smart flood management. This study provides the implementation, latest trends, and universal research topography over the past decade, which assists to recognize primitive research and also provides supervision for the upcoming research.