The paper involves the study on the elastic and elasto-plastic stress wave propagation in the 1-D and 2-D solid media. The Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics equations governing the elastic and elasto-plastic large deformation dynamic response of solid structures are presented. The proposed additional stress points are introduced in the formulation to mitigate the tensile instability inherent in the SPH approach. Both incremental rate approach and leap-frog algorithm for time integration are introduced and the new solution algorithm is developed and implemented. Two examples on stress wave propagation in aluminium bar and 2-D elasto-plastic steel plate are included. Results from the proposed SPH approach are compared with available analytical values and finite element solutions. The comparison illustrates that the stress wave propagation problems can be effectively solved by the proposed SPH method. The study shows that the SPH simulation is a reliable and robust tool and can be used with confidence to treat transient dynamics such as linear and non-linear transient stress wave propagation problems.