EDIT3: Thanks for very varied answers. I with I could approve two answers and not just one. The question was answered, by both Omegacron and Nate Watson. While Omegacron's answer is much better formatted, Watson's had more relevant examples. My question is about kinetic projectiles like simple shells and debris, not about nukes or chemical weapons, which almost everyone here insists on bringing up. However, these two answers, as well as Jim2B's, paint a complete picture about Federation hulls. Which is "nowhere near as tough as the theory behind them claims"
I've had a discussion with someone, a silly what-if - NCC-1701-x Enterprise vs Battlestar Galactica 2004.
We've been unable to conclude who would get the upper hand - Galactica with it's huge size, incredibly thick armour, rain of metal fire, nukes and armour-piercing explosive rounds that could level Pentagon in a hit, or Enterprise, with it's shields, high-tech, and great, but highly concentrated firepower.
The main problem is that we just can't remember a fight or an example where a Federation ship bigger than a shuttle was hit by a projectile physical. So we can't judge how will Galactica's rain of steel would affect the Enterprise. Our rules were "on-screen events > theory/words" (for example photon torpedoes are said to destroy small planets in Voyager, but in a fight, they struggle to breach shields) and that both ships are moving at a speed they usually are shown to fight at. Slowly.
The only example of physical hit vs shields that I can remember was when the Enterprise-E bumped into a Mogai's wing and lost more than half of it's shield strenght and took minor internal damage, in the movie Nemesis, and I'm pretty sure there were ships destroyed by debris in DS9 and First Contact. I also remember (vaugely) Romulans threatening the Federation with nukes, something the Federation took seriously (on a semi-related note).
I'm looking for an answer compatible with TV shows and movies, not the theory behind them, and I'm looking for both examples where the the damage was mitigated as well as when it was catastrophic.
Also, this is not a Galactica vs Enterprise question, I've only mentioned it because I thought some context would be useful.
EDIT: I am fully aware of Star Trek's inconsistencies, this is why I am asking for examples of both shrugging off the hit AND when it did catastrophic damage. I know there are both. And once again, this is NOT Galactica vs Enterprise.
EDIT2: This is not about nukes! This is specifically about not nukes - kinetic projectiles, be it ammo or debris or meteors or garbage. Not nukes, not chemical weapons, not energy-based weapons. Nukes are different from plain kinetic projectiles. They explode and generate heat, emit radiation, and make a shockwave. a) most of it goes into emptiness, b) space already has a lot of radiation, c) only in atmosphere tl;dr nukes usually are not that dangerous. Now, a small but very very fast projectile can pierce a ship.
Answer
They seem to vary drastically between models.
The Galaxy class seems to be ludicrously non-durable. In "Cause and Effect", the ship was destroyed multiple times by simply having the Nacelles grazed by another vessel.
The Intrepid class seems to be extremely durable, despite its design flaws. Voyager was able to survive up until the end of the "Year of Hell", and then it was a high speed collision with another vessel that finally destroyed it. It withstood meteor showers, dozens of temporal torpedoes, numerous sections being destroyed, etc. I'm ignoring the episode where the ship was nearly destroyed by cheese, because the bio-neural circuitry was an experimental after-construction modification. We also saw it survive traveling at Quantum slipstream speeds for short flights, which was good, because such speeds were above the ship's fitted operating limits.
The NX-01 was initially terrible, but got a major upgrade. We saw in "minefield", that a single mine was able to destroy a sizeable chunk of the vessel. Yet in the Xindi arc, after it got some upgrades, it withstood dozens of hits in one episode, yet was able to avoid complete destruction.
The Defiant class was tough, as we saw it take numerous direct and keep flying, and saw this happen multiple times.
Their shuttles seem to have sturdy hulls, but touchy components. We've seen a bunch of shuttle crashes where the hulls were barely damaged, but the internal components rendered the vessel inoperable.
The sovereign class was pretty bad. In Star Trek Nemesis (I'm sorry for reminding you of that movie), we saw the ship nearly destroyed by one vessel. And this wasn't even a top of the line vessel they were fighting. This was a vessel that was slapped together out of what the Remans, a slave race, were able to obtain. In the end, it only survived because of help from 3 additional vessels.
The Constitution class seems to be pretty good. We saw one get pulled by the Tholians into the mirror universe, and survive without much damage. We saw one survive an Ambi-plasma encounter in the animated series (yes, it's only sort-of canon, but I'm counting it).
So overall, Federation vessel durability seems to vary based on vessel class.
Also, to people who say that the bio-neural gel packs were part of the vessel to begin with, and not a feature added after construction, we know that Voyager is an intrepid class, which means it's a standard design, of which there's at least a dozen other vessels of the same design. Yet, in "State of Flux", Torres states that no other Federation vessel would have bio-neural fibers. This means bio-neural circuitry was unique to Voyager, and not part of the Intrepid class in general. And the pilot episode explicitly states that certain parts of the computer were replaced with biological tissue, which means that standard circuitry was installed prior to switching. Make what you will of that.
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