The purpose of the work described in this paper was to provide information on the elastic and plastic deformation of steel beams subjected to transverse impact. The particular impact problem treated was chosen to correspond to conditions in tests in which a beam initially at rest is struck by a massive hammer, so that a specified change of velocity is imposed at a certain cross section in a small time interval. In the present analysis the initial elastic and subsequent elastic-plastic motions were obtained by methods similar to those used by Bleich and Salvadori (3). As in (3), it is assumed that plastic deformation occurs only at a single stationary plastic hinge (in this case at the struck cross section). Results obtained are compared with those of a “rigid-plastic” solution of the same problem, in which plasticity conditions are correctly taken into account but elastic vibrations are not included.