Research progress and trend analysis of virtual manufacturing based on CiteSpace

Virtual manufacturing technology is an advanced manufacturing technology that uses computer modeling and simulation technology to build a digital model of a production system and then simulate the real manufacturing process. This paper analyzes the research progress and trend of virtual manufacturing based on CiteSpace. Firstly, taking Scopus as the paper retrieval platform, collected 6091 papers related to the virtual manufacturing field. Secondly, based on CiteSpace, carried out co-occurrence and clustering, and drew a map of National (regional) scientific research cooperation relationships, a map of hotspots in the virtual manufacturing field, and a keyword emergence diagram. The international cooperation, research hotspots, and research frontiers in the virtual manufacturing field are summarized successively. It is pointed out that Industry 4.0 theory and intelligent technology represented by Digital Twin are the future research focus.