Preface to the special issue

The special issue focuses on cutting-edge topics of design, modelling, and mechanics understanding in product design and advanced manufacturing. Other topics included in the special issue also cover virtual simulation and reverse engineering; additive manufacturing; product manufacturing; machining mechanism, and modelling using numerical simulation and computational modelling. As the articles included in this special issue showcase, there is an increasing demand for studying advanced manufacturing processes and applications from biomedical to aerospace engineering. Modelling and mechanistic understanding of any physical phenomena are the routes to developing, hybridizing, and optimizing any manufacturing processes with capabilities beyond those currently available.

Product design and manufacturing are essential activities in product development that significantly impact the development and production of the final product, and any faults or possible hazards that were not anticipated may result in additional costs or even redesign. Considering these recent trends and increasing demand in product design and manufacturing, the special issue “Computational and Numerical Modelling for Product Design and Manufacturing” has been organized for the International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing (IJIDeM). This special issue aims to disseminate recent research, theories, and practices relevant to areas of product design and manufacturing technology to improve industrial performance.

Hence, one of the themes running across this special issue emphasizes the call for interdisciplinary interactions between traditional modelling approaches and advanced modelling approaches that can include virtual manufacturing processes as a source of new information.

The contributions in this special issue encompass a wide range of research, including but not limited to:

  • Product design and development: an innovative approach for transforming from engineering design to production.

  • Reverse Engineering and rapid prototyping.

  • Modelling, simulation, and control of manufacturing systems.

  • Application of finite element simulation for modelling and analysis of product design and machining/manufacturing mechanism understanding.

  • Mathematical and numerical simulation and modelling.

  • Design for additive manufacturing.

  • Design for manufacturable hollow structures, cellular structures, multiscale structures, multi-material structures and composite structures.

  • Design optimization methods such as topology optimization, size optimization, and shape optimization to support advanced manufacturing.

  • Design and optimization.

We thank the authors, reviewers, and handling editors for their hard work and dedication to this special issue.