With the ever-increasing potential for injuries and fatalities from blast events, transportation accidents and subsequent equipment failures, scientists and engineers face an increasing challenge of finding solutions that save lives and reducing the risk of injury.

The work carried out within BISRU involves analytical, computational and experimental techniques. All theoretical and numerical analyses are generally supported by in-house experiments. However where these experiments cannot be performed within the bounds of BISRU, then external tests or results in recognised publications are used for validation. Even though most of the research in the unit are inter-linked they can be "sub-divided" in the following sections: