The field you're looking for in audio is known as physical modeling, it's a facet of the broader field of audio synthesis (along with subtractive synthesis, FM

The field you're looking for in audio is known as physical modeling, it's a facet of the broader field of audio synthesis (along with subtractive synthesis, FM synthesis, granular synthesis, etc). Physical modeling is primarily used to simulate musical instruments or create non-existent instruments like a 40 ft wide frame drum or a saxophone made of rubber. I don't see it used that often to simulate non-musical noises, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were other people out there doing it.