Digital Metallurgical Engineering: A Scientometric Review of Progress, Applications, and Prospects

Accelerated industrialization has increased demand for metallic materials, while multiphase reactions, feed variability, and process coupling in metallurgy induce compositional segregation, microstructural heterogeneity, and energy instability, making quality stability, energy efficiency, and sustainable supply core industry objectives. This paper systematically examines digital engineering and its role in the evolution of metallurgical engineering. Through an analysis of its integration with metallurgical processes, it demonstrates that single digitalization alone is insufficient to meet the growing demands for coordination across equipment, processes, and systems. Accordingly, this paper provides a comprehensive review of the research field of digital metallurgical engineering. This review comprises three core components: (1) key enabling technologies, including data acquisition, process modeling and simulation, intelligent control, cyber-physical integration, and system-level coordination; (2) differentiated digitalization priorities across metallurgical sub-domains; (3) systematic integration of metallurgical processes, logistics, and management systems. Despite its significant potential, digital transformation still faces substantial challenges. To fully leverage digital engineering, this study advocates the development of hybrid mechanism-data models for strongly coupled high-temperature processes, unified optimization of energy and material flows, and the embedding of intelligent controllers into core metallurgical operations.