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When something explodes, crashes, or collides at incredible speed, an invisible yet devastating wave races through the air and materials. 

More than a gentle wave, a bit like a tsunami, shock waves travel faster than sound and cause an instant, extreme jump in pressure and heat. It’s a violent force that can crush, shatter, or permanently change materials in a split second.  

At ���������¼� Canberra’s Impact Dynamics Lab, PhD researcher Suman Shah is studying how to protect people, infrastructure, and even spacecraft from these extreme events.  

“By understanding how shock waves propagate and interact with different materials, we can predict and improve how structures hold up under explosive or high-impact events,” Suman says. 

While this might sound like research reserved for outer space, the applications are everywhere. Helmets worn by firefighters, cyclists, and soldiers, for example, can be redesigned with advanced composites to better absorb waves of stress caused by impacts or blasts, reducing the risk of traumatic brain injuries. 

The research focuses on composite materials made of layers or fibres of different substances, which behave very differently from traditional, single-material structures like steel, for example. 

“When a shock wave hits a composite, it encounters interfaces between different materials. Each interface is an opportunity for the wave to be partly reflected, scattered, or slowed down. The composite is acting like a shock absorber,” Suman says. 

“In Defence applications, armoured vehicles are often subjected to high-velocity impacts. Advanced composites, designed to dissipate shock energy, can improve survivability and reduce weight.”

“For military personnel, even small improvements in headgear or body armour can be life-saving. By tailoring the structure of composites, we can make protective gear lighter without sacrificing strength, which is critical for mobility and endurance in the field.”  

Similarly, in aerospace engineering, shock-resistant composites can mitigate damage to spacecraft and ensure mission success and longevity.  

These improvements can mean the difference between catastrophic damage and survival, whether that’s protecting astronauts in orbit, or people here on Earth.  

Small design changes, such as angling the layers inside a material, can also make a big difference. 

“When a shock wave hits layers that are placed at an angle, the shock has to travel a longer, zigzag path. Stretching the pulse in time is good news for shock mitigation: it means the energy is being spread out rather than delivered in one big spike,” Suman says.  

To test these materials, the team uses a special piece of equipment called a light gas gun. It works like a high-tech cannon, shooting a small flat plate at very high speeds into a flat target sample. When the plate hits, it creates a shockwave that travels through the material. By studying how that wave moves, the team can learn how the material behaves under extreme conditions. 

Specialised sensors called manganin stress gauges, adapted for this research, allow the team to measure exactly how much shock energy is absorbed as it travels through a sample. 

The next phase of the research will push materials to even greater speeds and explore how temperature and environmental conditions affect their shock resistance. The team will also develop new kinds of layered materials with smoother transitions between layers, an approach that could absorb even more energy. 

From protecting satellites against space debris to improving the helmets worn by emergency responders, shockwave mitigation research is finding ways to turn one of the most destructive forces in nature into something we can manage, control, and ultimately survive.