Evolution of galaxies in pairs: Learning from simulations

Numerical simulations represent an essential instrument to understand the physical processes occurring in interacting and merging systems, giving insight into the evolution of their morphological and kinematical properties, their star-formation histories, metal enrichement, etc. After a inexhaustive description of some of the physical phenomena related to galaxy collisions, we present the GalMer Project, a computational effort aiming at studying statistically the role that interactions play in determining galaxy evolution. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)