This special issue of International Journal for Engineering Computations contains
extended versions of the papers first presented by several invited speakers at the
NATO-sponsored advanced research workshop on “Multi-physics and multi-scale
computer models in non-linear analysis and optimal design of engineering structures
under extreme conditions”, which was held in Bled, Slovenia, from 13 to 17 June 2004. It
also features a couple of papers contributed by young researchers, who all made short
presentations of their research works at that meeting. The collected papers seek to
present the most recent research achievements on this currently very active research
topic, and are therefore considered to be more suitable for a scientific journal than for a book-like presentation of keynote lectures, which was already published
(Ibrahimbegovic and Brank, 2004). We are grateful to our colleague (and one of the
keynote lecturers at the NATO-ARW in Bled) Professor D.R.J. Owen, the Editor of
International Journal for Engineering Computations, for kindly providing us an
opportunity to gather all those contributions in the present special issue.