Increasing demand for safety becomes nowadays a clearly visible trend. One of the main areas of widespread research is the design of systems protecting against heavy dynamic loads such as low and medium velocity traffic-related impacts and environmental loadings. Commonly applied passive systems are typically designed for a specified load scenario, which limits their performance over any wider range of loads. This shortcoming can be significantly reduced by implementation of adaptive impact absorption (AIA) systems. The general concept of an AIA system refers to a real time adaptation of an energy-absorbing structure to extreme overloading by (1) impact identification and (2) application of semiactively controllable dissipaters of various nature (magneto-rheological fluids, piezoactuated devices, pneumatic systems, etc.). Such an approach allows the structural capacity for absorption of unexpected extreme loads to be significantly enlarged. Good examples of potential practical applications for AIA systems are adaptive road barriers, adaptive landing gears, and adaptive airbags with a controllable release of pressure for emergency landing scenarios.

The field of AIA generates a number of original research problems related to the optimum design of AIA systems, impact load identification, and optimum semiactive control. This special issue is focused on mathematical modeling and optimization of AIA systems. Contributions presenting new concepts, theoretical developments, and their demonstrative presentations are encouraged.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Real time impact load identification (e.g., identification of the initial impact velocity and energy)
• Optimal design of AIA systems equipped with adaptive shock absorbers, including optimum topology design and optimum distribution of available absorbers and sensors
• Global adaptivity in an impact absorption process vs. local semiactive control of the available shock absorbers
• Global modeling of AIA systems, including computational techniques for geometric and material nonlinearities
• Modeling and optimization of adaptive multifolding structures
• Local modeling of adaptive shock absorbers
• New insights, concepts, and designs for highly efficient impact absorbing systems
• Performance limitations of an AIA system