For decades, explosion mechanics was confined to the domains of explosives, shock waves, and defense engineering. But as the field enters its seventh decade, its scientific scope has expanded far beyond conventional explosions, according to a new Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Letters (TAML) roadmap that brings together 175 researchers from 90 institutions. The comprehensive document, spanning 65 sections, reviews advances and challenges in energetic materials and detonation, shock waves and impact dynamics, damage and protection, and related engineering applications.
At its core, explosion mechanics asks how high-power-density energy is transmitted through shock waves and other intense dynamic processes within extremely short times, triggering high-speed flow, large deformation, and ultimately material failure. This raises a fundamental scientific question: How does a medium respond when energy loading, strain rates, and deformation are pushed to their limits? To answer this, researchers must combine experiment, theory, and computation, from advanced measurements that capture ultrafast events to models and simulations that describe highly nonlinear, multiscale behaviors.
The roadmap, published with DOI 10.1016/j.taml.2026.100714, signals that explosion mechanics is moving beyond solving specific engineering problems to become a broader science of matter and engineered systems under extreme dynamic conditions. That makes a field-wide roadmap especially timely: it can connect advances in experiment, theory, and computation, identify shared scientific challenges, and provide a common reference point for the road ahead.
One of the most significant shifts highlighted is the entry of artificial intelligence into mechanics research. The roadmap frames this transition in sweeping historical terms—from Galileo's experiment-and-mathematics paradigm to AI-empowered scientific research. The authors see this paradigm shift as a major challenge. The real question is not whether data-driven methods can replace physical models, but how experimental evidence, mechanics-based understanding, numerical simulation, and AI can work together to improve understanding and prediction of complex, extreme processes. This integration is particularly crucial for strongly nonlinear and multiscale problems.
The implications extend well beyond traditional applications. Insights from shock waves, high-speed impact, and dynamic material failure are increasingly relevant to aerospace engineering, advanced manufacturing, and structural protection. A companion Perspective in TAML brings that broader relevance into focus through resilient infrastructure, showing how knowledge of extreme loading and structural failure can help not only resist severe events but also maintain—and recover—engineering functionality. This matters for industries seeking to design safer, more durable structures and materials.
Explosion mechanics has a distinctive history in China. Hsue-Shen Tsien (Qian Xuesen) introduced the term "explosion mechanics" in 1963, during the country's "Two Bombs and One Satellite" program. It grew into an interdisciplinary field spanning fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, physics, and chemistry. Six decades on, its scope has widened from individual explosion events to a broader scientific challenge: understanding and predicting how matter and engineered systems respond under extreme dynamic conditions.
The new roadmap gives the field a shared reference point for what comes next, bringing together current knowledge, open questions, and emerging research tools in a single field-wide view. As researchers confront the integration of mechanics-based understanding with AI-enabled methods, the opportunity lies not in replacing physical models with data-driven approaches, but in bringing experiments, simulation, and AI together to sharpen both scientific understanding and predictive power. For readers and industries alike, this roadmap underscores the growing importance of extreme-condition science in advancing technology and resilience.
