As mankind continues to push back the boundaries and begins to explore other worlds and the ocean depths, a thorough understanding of how structures behave when subjected to extremes in temperature, pressure, and high loading rates will be essential. This symposium provided the perfect forum for presenting research into structures subjected to such extreme loads. There were a large number of papers presented under topics of impact, blast and shock loading, indicating a strong research interest in high rates of loading. Similarly new topics have been added to the traditional symposium list such as fire loading, earthquake loading, and fatigue and connection failures. It is clear now that fundamental knowledge of plastic deformation of structures to various extreme loads is coming of age. Each full paper was peer reviewed by at least two experts in the field.
