Explosion Mechanics Roadmap

Explosion mechanics originated from China’s “Two Bombs and One Satellite” project and was named by Hsue-Shen Tsien in 1963. It primarily studies the occurrence patterns of explosions, as well as the utilization, control, and protection of their mechanical effects. As an interdisciplinary subject, it involves fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, physics, and chemistry. The core of this discipline lies in understanding how high-power-density energy is transmitted through shock waves and other means within an extremely short time, leading to high-speed flow, large deformation, and even the failure of media. Since its inception, explosion mechanics has made a series of significant contributions to China’s national security and defense, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, and major engineering projects. Four distinguished scientists — Che-Min Cheng (2012), Kai-Jia Cheng (2013), Ze-Shan Wang (2017), and Qi-Hu Qian (2018) — have successively won the National Highest Science and Technology Award. In recent years, this field has continued to make breakthroughs following the “Four-Extreme” strategy, focusing on energetic materials, detonation technology, impact physics, and damage and protection. Moreover, the number of researchers engaged in explosion mechanics has grown rapidly. Nevertheless, the development of explosive mechanics still faces challenges, including the need for full-chain innovation from fundamental research to engineering applications, and the paradigm shift from Galileo’s “experiments-mathematics” approach to artificial-intelligence-empowered scientific research. In this Roadmap, we aim to provide a broad overview of recent and potential future activities in explosive mechanics and to present a development roadmap by gathering contributions from scientists with diverse backgrounds. We believe that these contributions will significantly stimulate the generation of original achievements and the advancement of state-of-the-art experimental, theoretical, and numerical tools. We also hope, this Roadmap will further establish the strategic importance of explosion mechanics as both a “shield” and a “spear” for safeguarding national security, and as a “masterful hand” in solving major engineering problems.