Deformation and failure of thin plates of mild steel were studied under quasi-static and dynamic impact loadings. Particular emphasis was placed on responses of simply supported circular plates subjected to centric orthogonal loadings. The latter comprised loadings due to relatively massive rigid cylindrical strikers with a hemispherical-end as well as a flat-end. The projectile motions featured variable and low impact velocities. Generally, good agreement was found between experimental results and those predicted by finite-element techniques for displacement-time curves and for force histories of the striker. It was concluded that the ABAQUS-based study (both the implicit and the explicit versions) revealed beneficial insights into the impact mechanics of plates by rigid projectiles.