Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing

 

Special Issue on: "The Impact of Rapid Manufacturing on the Engineering Design Process"

Editor: Dr. Ali K. Kamrani, University of Houston, USA

The engineering design process includes a set of activities arranged in a specific order with the clearly identified inputs and outputs. The objective of this process is to satisfy customer requirements and management objectives. This process is considered efficient when output of the process satisfies general customer and defined requirements, meets management objectives and customer deadlines, and all these with reduced costs and resources. For this purpose, many companies have established a concurrent design process for their products. Technologies such as rapid prototyping, rapid tooling and rapid manufacturing are designed to support this systematic and integrated cycle.

The next technological evolution in the rapid prototyping technology is rapid manufacturing (RM). RM is the automated fabrication of products directly from digital data. Some RM processes make use of available RP technologies to manufacture finished parts. Some new technologies have also been developed in support of the RM applications.

The main advantage of RM is its ability to produce customised parts. Studies have shown that many companies and agencies are considering the applicability of RM technologies to produce customised products. Conventional manufacturing technologies such as mass production are the most economical approach for production of large volume of components, although for high variety components (customised parts) this method is infeasible due to the high cost of operations. RM has the ability to produce large amounts of customised parts at a relatively low cost.

The purpose of this special issue is the publication of research reports and application descriptions in the advancement of RM technologies and its impact on the engineering design process including manufacturing and automation for the 21st century’s customer-focused product.

Subject Coverage
Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Engineering design process
• Systems engineering and processes
• Collaborative design and development
• Concurrent engineering
• Product variety
• Feature-based technologies
• CAD and CAM Integration
• Impact of RM on the design process
• Input methods and analysis
• RM process categories
• Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) considerations
• Materials considerations
• Application of available technologies
• New technologies developments and implementation
• Process optimisation
• Mass customisation
• Medical applications
• Case studies

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

Important Dates

Abstract of proposed articles: 30 September, 2008

Full paper submission for the invited articles: 15 December, 2008

Notification of reviews: 1 February, 2009

Revised manuscript submission: 31 March, 2009

Notification of acceptance: 2 May, 2009

Final Paper: 30 May, 2009