Abstract: With ever increasing threat during terrorism war and regional conflict, providing improved pro-tection for vehicle and its passengers is the common challenge for researchers in materials science, mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering and many other disciplines. This article presents an overview of the po-tential threat of common explosives to vehicle safety, the underlying mechanisms, the influence of key factors on explosive loading, and the different types of blast injury to armored vehicles and passengers. Based on the analysis of existing experimental technology, characterization methods and finite element simulation results,the current research status of explosion protection designs for both military and civil vehicles are summarized,including the development trend of novel lightweight protective materials and structures, and future trends in explosion-protection design for armored vehicles are discussed.