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An interactive hybrid technique has been investigated as a feasible method for allowing the designer a means to predict failure modes and general crashworthiness response of complex multi-degree of freedom structural systems, such as the automotive vehicle, without the necessity of innumerable, costly destructive tests. The technique employs average internal energy of deformable elements and internal reaction load density spectrums, with a simplified yield and buckling criterion, as the mechanism for predicting collapse modes of the shock excited system containing large arbitrary shaped rigid bodies which are linked by structural elements, composed of nonlinear, rate-sensitive, materials. Incremental finite element approximations account for the system nonlinearities in critical regions, identified by the predicted collapse mode, so as to allow judicious modeling of the system.