The contents of this volume reflect the increasing need to protect civilian infrastructure and industrial facilities against unintentional loads arising from accidental impact and explosion events as well as terrorist attacks. While advances have been made in recent years, many challenges remain, such as to develop more effective and efficient blast and impact mitigation approaches than those currently available. The primary focus remains the survivability of physical facilities and the protection of people, as well as reducing economic losses and impact on the environment, with emphasis on innovative protective technologies to support the needs of an economically growing, modern society. The application of such technologies ranges from the safe transportation of people and dangerous materials to defences against natural hazards.

Large scale testing is economically prohibitive and results from small scale laboratory testing are prone to scaling uncertainties. Improving the knowledge on how structures behave under a variety of load actions is therefore essential; some of these actions interact making their definition even more complex and difficult. Consequently, more use of advanced numerical simulations for load and structural response calculations is common practice in industry and research. Such calculations can directly be used in design and risk assessments, but also contribute to the development of simplified design tools and design codes. Numerical or exact modelling techniques need to be complemented with experimental validation is vital for the modelling approach to be acceptable. 

The included papers, presented at the 17th International Conference on Structures under Shock and Impact, highlight new research ideas and results to promote a better understanding of a range of critical issues among those mentioned above.