Additive manufacturing is a recent trend in production processes owing to its many benefits. It can be defined as the process of producing parts through the deposition of material in a layer-by-layer fashion. It has been a topic of intense study and review by many researchers. In this work, a comprehensive review pertaining to additive manufacturing has been accomplished. The evolution of additive manufacturing as a prominent technology and its various phases are discussed. The importance of part orientation, build time estimation, and cost computation has also been reviewed. The remarkable aspect of this work is the identification of problems associated with different additive manufacturing methods. Because of the imperfections in additive manufacturing, its hybridization with other methods, such as subtractive manufacturing, has been emphasized. This review will help readers understand the different aspects of additive manufacturing and explore new avenues for future research.

The emergence of Industry 4.0, also referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, has entirely transformed how the industry or business functions and evolves. It can be attributed to its broadening focus on automation, decentralization, system integration, cyber-physical systems, etc. Its implementation promises numerous benefits in terms of higher productivity, greater volatility, better control and streamlining of processes, accelerated enterprise growth, sustainable development, etc. Despite the worldwide recognition and realization of Industry 4.0, its holistic adoption is constrained by the requirements of specific skills among the workforce. The personnel are expected to acquire adaptive thinking, cognitive and computational skills, predominantly in the area of information technology, data analytics, etc. Thus, the universities that laid the foundation for future talents or trends in society have to adapt and modernize the existing programs, facilities, and infrastructure. This reshaping of higher education in consonance with the vision of Industry 4.0 possesses its opportunities and challenges. There are, of course, a multitude of factors involved and they need a reasonable assessment to strategically plan this metamorphosis. Therefore, this work aims to explore and analyze the different factors that influence the progression and enactment of Industry 4.0 in universities for sustainable education. For this purpose, a systematic approach based on a questionnaire as well as a SWOT (strengths (S), weaknesses (W), opportunities (O), and threats (T)) integrated with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is adopted. The questionnaires are administered to university employees and students (or stakeholders) to assess their viewpoint, as well as to estimate the priority values for individual factors to be included in SWOT. The AHP is implemented to quantify the different factors in terms of weights using a pairwise comparison matrix. Finally, the SWOT matrix is established depending on the questionnaire assessment and the AHP weights to figure out stakeholders’ perspectives, in addition to the needed strategic scheme. The SWOT implementation of this research proposes an aggressive approach for universities, where they must make full use of their strengths to take advantage of the emerging opportunities in Industry 4.0. The results also indicate that there are fundamental requirements for universities in Industry 4.0, including effective financial planning, skilled staff, increased industrial partnerships, advanced infrastructure, revised curricula, and insightful workshops. This investigation undoubtedly underlines the importance of practical expertise and the implementation of digital technologies at the university level to empower novices with the requisite skills and a competitive advantage for Industry 4.0.

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Electron beam melting (EBM) technology is a novel additive manufacturing (AM) technique, which uses computer controlled electron beams to create fully dense three-dimensional objects from metal powder. It gives the ability to produce any complex parts directly from a computer aided design (CAD) model without tools and dies, and with variety of materials. However, it is reported that EBM has limitations in building overhang structures, due to the poor thermal conductivity for the sintered powder particles under overhang surfaces. In the current study, 2D thermo-mechanical finite element models (FEM) are developed to predict the stresses and deformation associated with fabrication of overhang structures by EBM for Ti-6Al-4V alloy. Different support structure geometries are modeled and evaluated. Finally, the numerical results are validated by experimental work.

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