Mode III fracture of a large-scale welded extruded aluminum panel

As part of the research on deformation and fracture of the large-scale welded thin-walled AA 6061 panels, this paper presents the experimental and numerical investigation on its fracture under Mode III loading. The proposed local fracture approach is applied by incorporating the calibrated damage input data into the finite element model. The investigations demonstrate that the present finite element model can successfully predict the global force–deflection response, the deformation modes, as well as the crack formation and propagation, in this quite sophisticated problem involving welded joints.