Recent Advances in Applied Mechanics: Lightweight Design and Passive Safety for Transportation Equipment

Dear Colleagues,

Advanced lightweight and passive safety technologies, particularly those centered on structural crashworthiness, have become central priorities in the development of modern transportation equipment spanning the automotive, rail transit, aerospace and marine sectors. These technologies are widely recognized by both academia and industry as critical enablers for improving operational safety, boosting energy efficiency and elevating overall manufacturing sophistication and technological innovation capacity.

Nevertheless, achieving an optimal balance between structural lightweighting and reliable crash protection remains a long-standing and formidable engineering challenge. Addressing this issue demands systematic mechanical research across multiple length scales: accurate mechanical characterization and constitutive modeling of lightweight materials at the material scale, crashworthiness analysis and innovative design of energy-absorbing structures and mechanisms at the component scale and integrated lightweight optimization coupled with system-level safety performance evaluation at the full vehicle/equipment scale. It also relies on the synergy of high-precision numerical simulation, advanced testing methods and multidisciplinary design optimization frameworks.

This Special Issue is dedicated to presenting cutting-edge advances in applied mechanics for the lightweight design and passive safety of transportation equipment. We invite original research papers, comprehensive state-of-the-art reviews and industrial engineering case studies that tackle fundamental mechanical issues and practical engineering challenges in this field. By building a high-quality exchange platform for researchers, engineers and policymakers worldwide, this Special Issue aims to advance the development of safer, more efficient and more sustainable transportation systems.

All mechanical issues involved in the lightweighting and passive safety design of transportation equipment are within the scope of this Special Issue.

Dr. Ruyang Yao
Dr. Bei Zhang
Dr. Tong Pang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.