The special issue is to address the state of knowledge in the areas of modelling materials and structural behavior under dynamic loading, including blast/shock induced vibration, impact loading, and seismic actions, within the context of structural analysis and design verification essential for protecting structures against seismic, blast, and impact loadings. The special issue topics will include, but not limited to, seismic behavior of structures; response of structures under blast, shock, and impact loads; material behavior under blast; impact and explosion tests; structural mechanism and damage evolution; protection concepts and design; linear/nonlinear analytical/numerical modelling of structures and simulation. This issue will benefit structural engineers, who are facing challenges, when modelling structures for analysis and design for extreme loads (seismic, blast, and impact), in which the structure primarily behaves nonlinearly and inelastically. We invite investigators to contribute original research articles as well as review articles that will stimulate the continuing efforts to understand the modelling of structures under the extreme loadings.

Since the last century, many developments have been made in understanding the seismic demand on structures due to earthquake induced ground motions and structure response under dynamically varying loads. However, observations from the recent past earthquakes like Chile 2010 and New Zealand 2011 have demonstrated that structures designed to modern codes of practice and guidelines have not performed up to the expectations in reducing losses due to earthquakes. Furthermore, the recent earthquakes have demonstrated that the vulnerability of deficient, that is, noncomplaint, structures is higher than the previously known. All these are pointing to the growing interest in tools for modelling of structures under earthquake loading, to accurately account for the possible damage mechanisms and their implication on the structure response under earthquakes of varying intensity, for example, frequent earthquakes, rare earthquakes, and very rare earthquake. With the advancement of experimental database, it is possible to test, validate, and calibrate tools for structure modelling and analysis, which can be in turn used both in research and practice.

There are many severe conditions under which the vibration occurs under short duration impact loads within milliseconds of time history response such as falling weight impact loading and rock fall on structures. The research papers related to short duration will be added.

The impact with very high response such as blast and shock vibration impact on various types’ structures within microseconds will be added.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Modelling of structures under seismic loadings
• Modelling of structures under impact vibrations
• Modelling of structures under blast/shock vibrations