In the context of wave propagation in solids caused by particle-matter interactions, the composite structure of copper diamond is believed to have a significant impact on the material’s response. This limits the accuracy of isotropic homogeneous elastic and elastic-plastic models used in earlier studies modeling the material’s behavior under such conditions. This study aims to investigate the mesoscopic behavior of the copper diamond and discusses the advantages and limitations of modeling the internal composite structure of the material. The material response of CuCD was modeled in a 2D finite element simulation, considering internal wave propagation as a result of external impact and an internal thermal shock. Various homogeneous models were considered and compared with a mesoscopic model. The homogeneous models tested were found to be able to capture wave propagation effects in the material, and the inclusion of a hardening model allowed their performance to approach that of the mesoscale model considered, which is significantly more computationally demanding.