17th International Conference on Structures under Shock and Impact

SUSI 2025 is the 17th event in the successful series of International Conferences on Structures under Shock and Impact. The series started in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1989 and the most recent in-person meeting was held in Seville in 2018. The 16th event was organised online in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022 SUSI was merged with two other structures-related conferences and this was also an online event.

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 is reflected in the sustained interest in the SUSI meetings over three decades. While advances have been made over this period, many challenges remain, such as developing more effective and efficient blast and impact mitigation approaches than those that currently exist. 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 this technology ranges from the safe transportation of people and dangerous materials to defences against natural hazards such as floods, wind, storms, tsunamis and earthquakes.

Large scale testing is prohibitive and small scale laboratory testing results in scaling uncertainties. Continuing research is therefore essential to improve knowledge on how structures behave under a variety of load actions, some of which interact making it even more complex and difficult to define. Consequently, more use of advanced numerical simulations for load and structural response calculations is common practice in industry and academia. Such calculations can directly be used in design and risk assessment calculations, but also be applied to more simplified design tools and design codes. Whether numerical or analytical modelling techniques are employed, experimental validation is vital for there to be acceptance of the approach to be used.

The SUSI meeting, over the years, has fulfilled many objectives, not least to provide a forum for the exchange of research ideas and results to promote a better understanding of the critical issues relating to the testing behaviour, modelling and analysis of protective structures against blast and impact loading.

The SUSI meetings aim to bring together scientists and engineers from a wide range of academic disciplines and industrial backgrounds who have an active interest in structural impact and the blast response of structures and materials. In this way, major developments in various directions can be brought to the attention of the entire blast and impact community.