How does Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) develop in the engineering domain: A bibliometric analysis with critical review

In recent years, Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) have been considered in broad industrial areas to improve the effectiveness of maintenance activities. In chemical engineering domains, PHM is regarded to have big potential for reliability and safety management of complex systems. In this study, a bibliometric analysis has been conducted to explore the evolution of PHM by retrieving 2351 publications from the Web of Science Core Collection (Retrieve date: 12/05/2023). Science mapping techniques are applied to visualize the results. This study helps to reveal research hotspots and development trends of PHM, with a particular focus on chemical engineering. As for the results, PHM has become a multidisciplinary topic. Its research in chemical engineering domains has gained increasing attention in recent years. By integrating advanced models like neural networks and digital twins, PHM can complement traditional approaches, offering real-time insights that improve operational strategies. In the future, PHM progress will focus on multidisciplinary applications with stronger collaboration between academia and industry, with more potential to address practical challenges.