The modelling of impact events, has been considered vital precisely because experimental work in these areas can tend to be difficult, expensive or, in some cases, illegal. Examples could include the penetration of an aircraft skin by a fragment from a missile, the projection of a non-penetrating projectile against a fuel tank or the passage of a shock wave from a detonating explosive.

Computational methods have become very important in this area. Methods have left the defence and nuclear laboratories over the last 15 years, especially as improvements in computational approaches to finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics have made the implementation of models to dynamic processes possible.