Abstract
2020 was a difficult year. While the COVID-19 pandemic took its toll across the world, it is remarkable that the engineering community continued to innovate and to develop technology that will improve the lives of billions of people. In early 2021 as we, tentatively, look forward to a ‘normal’ future, we are proud to present some recent fascinating papers from Advances in Mechanical Engineering.
Thermal conditions for forging technology
Researchers in the Czech Republic have looked at the influence of thermal balancing on the operation of forging technology. Forging machinery is crucial to 80% of global production, and the presented results demonstrate that the energy consumption of such production can be reduced through the appropriate selection of scale and of forging frequencies. 1
Plankton, bioconvection and nanofluids
Bioconvective nanofluids are found in a huge number of phenomena and important modern technologies, from the behaviour of microplankton in the world’s oceans (and the associated generation of the majority of the world’s oxygen), to fuel cells and bio-diesel. Researchers in Pakistan present a model to account for homogeneous-heterogeneous chemical reactions. 2
Sustainable manufacturing and Industry 4.0
Sustainable manufacturing (SM) is gaining increasing attention in the research community, and it has gained wide acceptance in business and industry. Here, researchers in Spain discuss the consistencies and inconsistencies in the research community related to the interpretations of sustainable manufacturing and Industry 4.0, as well as the lack of consensus about the true social impact of Industry 4.0. 3
Automated manufacturing and genetic algorithms
Researchers in China have presented a Pareto-based genetic algorithm for multi-objective scheduling of automated manufacturing systems (AMS). They considered multiobjective sceduling problems for deadlock-prone systems, a more realistic assumption than usually applied, and found that their techniques can improve performance and optimisation in an AMS. 4
These papers not only highlight the global reach of our journal, but also the importance of interdisciplinary research. In the above, manufacturing is a consistent theme but the different approaches presented by our authors serve to demonstrate the diversity and creativity of our community.
At Advances in Mechanical Engineering, we are excited about the future of our wonderful subject, and we look forward to serving our readers and authors as that future unfolds.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.