Fracture of welded aluminum thin-walled structures

A comprehensive methodology was developed in the thesis for damage prediction of welded aluminum thin-walled structures, which includes material modeling, calibration, numerical simulation and experimental verification. An extensive experimental program was conducted on large-scale welded panels used on Inter City Express (ICE) high-speed European passenger trains. These panels consist of geometrically complex extrusions, which are welded together to form the final structure. A wealth of data was generated to validate the proposed methodology. The current work has demonstrated the efficiency and robustness required for mainstream industrial applications. As the first step, a local fracture criterion was validated on two types of aluminum components without welds: (i) S-rails under quasi-static and dynamic axial loading; (ii) large-scale extruded aluminum panels under 4-point bending. With the fracture parameter calibrated from uniaxial tensile tests, numerical simulations gave excellent predictions of crack formation for test articles. A novel technique was developed to calibrate heterogeneous weldments for plasticity and fracture. This technique eliminates the need for machining and testing of miniature tensile specimens, cut from different zones within the weldment.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Zheng, Li, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tomasz Wierzbicki.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/35629

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35629