Shock wave research covers important inderdisciplinaryareas which range from basic topics on gasdynamics,combustion and detonation, physico-chemistry of hightemperature gases, plasma physics, astro and geophysics,materials science, astronautics and space technology tomedical and industrial applications.This book includes 202 papers presented at the 18th theInternational Symposium on Shock Waves which describe theresearch frontier of shock wave phenopmena and 14 plenarylectures which show the state of the art of various fieldsof shock wave research. This proceedings is a uniquecollection of most important and updated shock waveresearch.