The present thesis, made in collaboration with the European Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC), aims to investigate the reliability and improve the modeling of a N1 vehicle FEM model developed to test barriers for protection of public spaces. To these aims, two crash sensitivity analysis are conducted using a planar rigid barrier: influence of the angle of impact between vehicle and barrier, and influence of the position of a 1-ton mass placed on the flatbed of the model. While the impact angle has big influence on the exchanged forces and on the momentum, the position of the mass has minor effects.