Int. Conf. on Computational Methods for Coupled Problems in Science and Engineering COUPLED PROBLEMS 2005 M. Papadrakakis, E. Oñate and B. Schrefler (Eds)  CIMNE, Barcelona, 2005 COUPLING PROCESS AND STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE TO ACCESS OF THE MATERIAL HISTORY AND IMPROVE CRASHWORTHINESS MODELLING OF ASSEMBLED STRUCTURES E. Markiewicz * and B. Langrand † * Industrial And Human Automatic Control And Mechanical Engineering Laboratory Crashworthiness Research Group (LAMIH/DRC) UMR CNRS 8530 University of Valenciennes Le Mont Houy, Jonas 2, 59313 Valenciennes Cedex 9, France e-mail: Eric.Markiewicz@univ-valenciennes.fr, web page: http://www.univ- valenciennes.fr/LAMIH/index.html † French National Office for Study and Research in Aeronautics (ONERA) MSE Department, RCS Unit 12, Bd Paul Painlevé, 59000 Lille, France e-mail: Bertrand.Langrand@onera.fr, web page: http://www.onera.fr Key words: Riveting and Spotwelding Assemblies Processes, Structural Ebrittlement, Crashworthiness Behaviour, Experiments, Mesoscopic Scale FE models. Abstract. The subject pinpoints the improvement of passenger safety in the transport field through the study of structural collapse during crash or impact events. At the very beginning of this work, the tools and methods hardly succeeded in predicting the behaviour of structures when failure occurs either by crack propagation in metal sheet or by assembly rupture. Contribution of present authors concerns mainly the study of assemblies through: - the understanding and modelling of structural embrittlement linked to the assembling process, - taking into account potential defects related to the variety of assemblies through statistical approaches, - the deficiencies of usual experimental techniques dedicated to the study of assemblies, - the relevance and validity of using simplified macroscopic geometrical model linkage.