For decades, explosion mechanics was narrowly associated with explosives, shock waves, and defense engineering. But a new Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Letters (TAML) roadmap, authored by 175 researchers from 90 institutions, signals a decisive shift. The field now encompasses how matter, materials, and engineering systems respond to extreme dynamic loading, with implications stretching from aerospace to resilient infrastructure.
Spanning 65 sections, the roadmap reviews energetic materials and detonation, shock waves and impact dynamics, damage and protection, and related applications. At its core, explosion mechanics asks how high-power-density energy transmits through shock waves and intense dynamic processes within extremely short times, triggering high-speed flow, large deformation, and material failure. This raises a fundamental question: How does a medium respond when energy loading, strain rates, and deformation are pushed to their limits?
Answering that requires integrating experiment, theory, and computation—from advanced measurements capturing ultrafast events to models describing highly nonlinear, multiscale behaviors. The roadmap argues that explosion mechanics is moving beyond solving specific engineering problems to become a broader science of matter and engineered systems under extreme conditions. That transition makes a field-wide roadmap timely: it connects advances across disciplines, identifies shared challenges, and offers a common reference point.
A major theme is the role of artificial intelligence. The authors frame a historical shift from Galileo's experiment-and-mathematics paradigm to AI-empowered scientific research. The 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 prediction of complex, extreme processes. This integration is seen as one of the field's biggest challenges, especially for strongly nonlinear and multiscale problems.
The roadmap also highlights applications beyond traditional explosions. 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 focuses on 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. Such cross-sector relevance underscores why this roadmap matters: it positions explosion mechanics as a foundational science for modern engineering.
Historically, explosion mechanics has distinctive roots in China. Hsue-Shen Tsien (Qian Xuesen) introduced the term in 1963 during the "Two Bombs and One Satellite" program. It grew into an interdisciplinary field spanning fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, physics, and chemistry. Six decades later, 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 roadmap's comprehensive nature—published in TAML with DOI 10.1016/j.taml.2026.100714—provides a shared reference for what comes next, bringing together current knowledge, open questions, and emerging research tools. By integrating mechanics-based understanding with AI-enabled methods, the field aims to sharpen both scientific understanding and predictive power. For researchers and engineers, this roadmap is not just a review; it is a strategic guide for a discipline increasingly central to tackling extreme dynamic challenges across industries.
