With the rapid development of sensing, communication, computing technologies, and analytics techniques, today’s manufacturing is marching towards a new generation of sustainability, digitalization, and intelligence. Even though the significance of both sustainability and intelligence is well recognized by academia, industry, as well as governments, and substantial efforts are devoted to both areas, the intersection of the two has not been fully exploited. Conventionally, studies in sustainable manufacturing and smart manufacturing have different objectives and employ different tools. Nevertheless, in the design and implementation of smart factories, sustainability, and energy efficiency are supposed to be important goals. Moreover, big data based decision-making techniques that are developed and applied for smart manufacturing have great potential in promoting the sustainability of manufacturing. In this paper, the state-of-the-art of sustainable and smart manufacturing is first reviewed based on the PRISMA framework, with a focus on how they interact and benefit each other. Key problems in both fields are then identified and discussed. Specially, different technologies emerging in the 4th industrial revolution and their dedications on sustainability are discussed. In addition, the impacts of smart manufacturing technologies on sustainable energy industry are analyzed. Finally, opportunities and challenges in the intersection of the two are identified for future investigation. The scope examined in this paper will be interesting to researchers, engineers, business owners, and policymakers in the manufacturing community, and could serve as a fundamental guideline for future studies in these areas.

Multilayered ultrasonic welding (USW) is widely used in joining of electrodes or tabs in lithium-ion batteries. To achieve quality joints and enhance the welding process robustness, an improved understanding of the joint formation is highly desirable. In this paper, USW of four-layered Ni-coated Cu is studied to investigate the joint formation at a single interface and joint propagation from interface to interface under both ambient and preheated conditions. The results indicate that joint formation involves three major mechanisms: Ni–Ni bonding with minimal mechanical interlocking, Ni–Ni bonding with moderate mechanical interlocking, and a combination of Ni–Ni bonding, Cu–Cu bonding, and severe mechanical interlocking. Results also show that joints propagate from the interface close to the sonotrode side to that close to the anvil side. It is further observed that the joint formation can be accelerated and the joint strength can be improved with process preheating, especially at the interface closest to the anvil. The effect of preheating is most significant during the early stage of the process, and diminishes as process progresses. The favorable effects of preheating improve the robustness of multilayered USW.

The performance of a magnetic-field-assisted finishing (MAF) process, an advanced surface finishing process, is severely affected by the rheological properties of an MAF brush. The yield stress and viscosity of the MAF brush, comprising iron particles and abrasives mixed in a liquid carrier medium, change depending on the brush’s constituents and the applied magnetic field, which in turn affect the material removal mechanism and the corresponding final surface roughness after the MAF. A series of experiments was conducted to delineate the effect of MAF processing conditions on the yield stress of the MAF brush. The experimental data were fitted into commonly used rheology models. The Herschel–Bulkley (HB) model was found to be the most suitable fit (lowest sum of square errors (SSE)) for the shear stress–shear rate data obtained from the rheology tests and used to calculate the yield stress of the MAF brush. Processing parameters, such as magnetic flux density, weight ratio of iron and abrasives, and abrasive (black ceramic in this study) size, with p-values of 0.031, 0.001 and 0.037, respectively, (each of them lower than the significance level of 0.05), were all found to be statistically significant parameters that affected the yield stress of the MAF brush. Yield stress increased with magnetic flux density and the weight ratio of iron to abrasives in MAF brush and decreased with abrasive size. A new process model, a rheology-integrated model (RM), was formulated using the yield stress data from HB model to determine the indentation depth of individual abrasives in the workpiece during the MAF process. The calculated indentation depth enabled us to predict the material removal rate (MRR) and the instantaneous surface roughness. The predicted MRR and surface roughness from the RM model were found to be a better fit with the experimental data than the pre-existing contact mechanics model (CMM) and wear model (WM) with a R² of 0.91 for RM as compared to 0.76 and 0.78 for CMM and WM. Finally, the RM, under parametric variations, showed that MRR increases and roughness decreases as magnetic flux density, rotational speed, weight ratio of iron to abrasive particles in MAF brush, and initial roughness increase, and abrasive size decreases.