Fundamental theories and applications of response and failure of engineering materials (e.g., rocks, concretes, steels, polymers, and glass) under highly dynamic loading. Topics include elastic and plastic stress wave propagation, failure and fracture theory under rapidly varying loads, dynamic fracture toughness, nucleation, and propagation of the damage in materials and their theoretical and experimental quantification.

Lectures will be supplemented by selected laboratory exercises involving the newly built state-of-the-art Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar facilities, to illustrate the physics of dynamic loading, strain-rate effects, and high-velocity fracture in engineering materials.