With this Special Issue, we celebrate the 85th anniversary of AAM. The Archive of Applied Mechanics was founded as “Ingenieur-Archiv” in 1929 (Vol. 1) by Richard Grammel, who served as editor for 34 years. In the beginning, manuscripts had been accepted in both German and English language. In 1991, the title “Ingenieur-Archiv” was changed to “Archive of Applied Mechanics” and the language of the manuscripts was restricted to English. Over the years, AAM experienced an ever-growing interest in the applied mechanics community. This is reflected by an increase in volume of the issues and, at the same time, by an improvement in the journal’s impact factor.

For this Special Issue, the members of the Editorial Board prepared manuscripts related to their field of expertise as a gift to the reader for their interest in and loyalty to AAM.

The Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Editor thank all the contributors to this 85th Anniversary Issue. Thanks are also due to the numerous volunteer reviewers behind the scene with their expertise and advice preserving the high standard and recognition of the journal with valuable effort. Last but not least, the excellent cooperation with the Publisher is gratefully acknowledged.