X International Symposium on Explosive Production of New Materials: Science, Technology, Business, and Innovations (EPNM-2010) held June 7–11, 2010 in Bechichi, Montenegro was organized by

• Institute of Structural Macrokinetics and Materials Science (ISMAN), Russian Academy of Sciences
• Council on Combustion and Explosion, Russian Academy of Sciences
• Division of Chemistry and New Materials, Russian Academy of Sciences
• Ministry of Science and Education, Montenegro

The previous IX EPNM Symposium was attended by above a hundred of researchers from 14 countries. Besides the research workers engaged in explosive welding, consolidation of powder materials, and shock/detonation-assisted synthesis of new materials, the symposium also attracted, for the first time, the attention of the business community involved in industrial-scale manufacturing of explosion-produced materials. The symposium had a good resonance and admittedly gave real profits to both research workers and manufacturers. In addition, the symposium also yielded rich experience in organizing such a forum by an international work team.

Despite some organizational difficulties caused by the global economic crisis, the Organizing Committee did its best in order to relocate the X EPNM Symposium from initially planned Bulgaria to Montenegro and then hold it on a high professional level.

The opening ceremony got started with words of greeting from the officials: V.N. Soshnin, Deputy Ambassador of Russian Federation to Montenegro and Igor Raduzinovich, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Montenegro.

In his key lecture, Prof. V.E. Fortov (Russia) outlined which features of detonation theory are being used to rationalize some processes taking place in the Universe such as explosions of supernovas.

The lecture by Prof. Yu.A. Gordopolov (Russia) devoted to the fundamentals of solid-state detonation synthesis has been listened to with great interest and attention.

New explosive blends for use in explosive treatment of materials have been suggested in the presentations made by Prof. A.A. Deribas (Russia) and Dr. V.V. Sil'vestrov (Russia).

Prof. J. Banker (United States), in co-authorship with Dr. M. Veehmayer (Germany), reported new data on the structure of the joint formed upon explosive welding of steel and titanium, a most popular pair in exploclad technology.

Prof. L.B. Pervukhin (Russia) overviewed in detail the current problems in explosive welding R & D.

Prof. K. Hokamoto with coworkers (Japan) presented new interesting results on underwater explosive welding.

In his presentation, Prof. А.А. Shtertser (Russia) thoroughly analyzed the existing methods for estimating the pressures developed in different geometries of explosive loading.

New interesting applications of explosive welding have been suggested by Prof. L.D. Dobrushin with coworkers (Ukraine) and Dr. A.Z. Bogunov (Russia).

Prof. A.E. Rozen with coauthors (Russia) reported on a new promising corrosion-resistant material fabricated by explosive welding.

A key problem in explosive welding — formation of the wavy structure — was treated in the presentation by Dr. V.I. Mali with coworkers (Russia).

A large group of presentations was devoted to new practical implementations.

New interesting test results for industrially fabricated Ti–Ni exploclad plates were reported by Dr. Z. Szulc and coauthors (Poland).

The feasibility of explosion-assisted synthesis of intermetallides was discussed in the presentations by Dr. N. Wada with coauthors (Japan), Dr. А. Peikrishvili with coauthors (Georgia, United States), and Dr. L. Kesckes with coauthors (United States, Georgia).

Much interest was evoked in the presentation by Dr. E. Carton (the Netherlands) on the mitigation of outdoor explosion effects.

Interesting results on fabrication of functionally graded W(Mo)/Cu materials by hot explosive consolidation were reported by Dr. X. Gao with coauthors (China).

Prof. V.V. Danilenko (Russia), one of the discoverers of the detonation synthesis of nanodiamonds, characterized the state-of-art in the production and application of detonation-synthesized nanodiamonds.

Positive influence of added nanodimonds on the performance of various materials was considered in the presentation by Prof. S.G. Konstantinova with coauthors (Bulgaria).

The problems of detonation-assisted spraying were treated in the presentations by Dr. T. Babul (Poland) and Prof. А.А. Shtertser (Russia).

The total number of oral presentations was above sixty. A distinctive feature of the symposium was a large number of young researchers that came from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, South Korea, and China.

An interesting and cognitive program of social events has been provided by local R-Tours Group.

Our special thanks to Mr. Slobodan Batskovich, Montenegro Ambassador to Russian Federation, who (being a physicist by education) personally controlled the situation with EPNM-2010 and had several meetings in Moscow with Yu.A. Gordopolov and O.O. Likhanova as representatives of the Organizing Committee.

Due to a financial support from our sponsors — Bitrub International (Russia), DMC (United States), EnergoMetall (Russia–Estonia), and Nano-SS (Bulgaria) — the Organizing Committee could help some young scientists to come to Montenegro.

Once again, we have to mention the concerted efforts of local work team at ISMAN — A.A. Deribas, Yu.A. Gordopolov, Yu.B. Sheck, V.A. Veretennikov, A.E. Sytschev, O.O. Likhanova, and L.V. Gordopolova — that did a nice job.

EPNM-2010 is over. A host of the next XI EPNM Symposium — American Colorado or South Korea — will be elucidated in the nearest future.

May be Montenegro again?