This special issue presents the results of the Sandia organized Model Validation Challenge Workshop, held May 2006. The workshop brought together researchers from different fields to present various approaches to model validation, and focused on the methodological elements of model validation rather than on model building. Three problems were defined in the disciplines of structural statics, structural dynamics, and heat transfer, all with a uniform structure. The workshop was specifically designed to investigate the relative merits of different approaches to hierarchal model validation through application to these problems. This paper describes a hierarchal approach in the challenge problems, presents the uniform conceptual framework that was used for the challenge problem definitions, and provides an overview of the organization of this special issue.