The rising of terrorist bombing threats and industrial explosion accidents highlight the necessity and importance of structural protection against intentional and accidental loadings such as blast and impact. The consequences of such extreme loading conditions have been found to be catastrophic with massive personnel injuries and fatalities, economic loss, and immeasurable social disruption in their wake. It is therefore imperative to enlighten the design of modern structures with consideration of protection against such extreme loadings.

Blast and impact loadings have the natures of short duration and high energy intensity, which results in very different structural response as comparing to when subjected to conventional quasi-static and less intense dynamic loading such as wind load and earthquake load. The analysis and design of conventional structures, therefore, cannot be directly implemented to the design of protective structures against extreme loadings. Moreover, the structural response and material behavior under blast and impact loading are usually nonlinear and time-dependent, involving complex stress states due to stress wave propagation. Simplified analysis and design approaches are not necessarily leading to reliable predictions. Comprehensive understanding about loading characteristics, dynamic material properties, and dynamic response predictions of structures are crucial to reliable and accurate predictions.

Recently, various efforts, including experiment testing, numerical simulation, and analytical derivation, have been devoted to achieving a reliable analysis and design of protective structures. Experimental testing includes both laboratory and field tests, which can demonstrate actual structural behaviors and also be used to validate the fidelity of numerical models. With the advancement of computer technology and computational mechanics, different numerical methods have been developed and employed to model the structural response to blast and impact loadings. Simplified approaches such single-degree-of-freedom and close-form solutions have been used to predict and analyze the structural response. All in all, the analysis and design of protective structures against blast and impact loadings in general is still a challenge.

This Special Issue aims to present the state-of-the-art research and understandings on the analysis and design of protective structures against blast and impact loading. Both original research articles, as well as review articles discussing the current state of the art, are welcomed.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Structural response to blast loading
• Structural vulnerability to gas explosion
• Vulnerability of structures to impact loading
• Structural vulnerability to windborne debris impact
• Projectile penetration and perforation of structures
• Prediction and simulation of explosion impact loading
• Innovative materials and behaviors at high strain rates
• Strengthening and mitigation of infrastructural protection