Recent trends and future outlooks in manufacturing methods and applications of FGM: a comprehensive review

Owing to its graded function and agglomeration of contradictory properties over its structure, functionally graded materials (FGMs) are popular as second-generation composites. FGMs are intended to optimize performance capability and survive in a harsh working environment without failure or losing their properties. This article presents a comprehensive review of FGM literature, detailing the evolution and development history, classification, and manufacturing methods for different types of FGMs, citing the merits and limitations of each. Moreover, the current status of the industry-specific applications of each category of FGMs is also summarized and discussed. Furthermore, the key challenges and future scopes of FGM to provide insight into future research directions are also discussed.