2. I'm pretty sure my entire above reply was focused on the fatigue life of welded alum members, I don't see that you addressed that point one iota. Typical response, go after the messenger instead of the message.
3. Anyone who doesn't understand alum welded highly loaded structures have a finite life span, should stay away from cars & airplanes.
4. The problem with "professional" testing, they are getting paid to gather a positive/expected result for those signing the check, and they usually do, and if not, the tests aren't released/published. Testing methods can help achieve that goal.
5. "feets" implies I don't google enough, you suggest too much. tough crowd.
#5. Google scholars... love it. Some of us have Engineering degrees from real schools, and even a smidge of design experience with steels, aluminums, Inconel, carbon fiber...
#2. Aluminum fatigue strength and its failure limit is not as nice as steel obviously. Welded will depend on the alloy, the filler, the post heat treat process, and etcetera.
#3. Airplanes have a 15-20 year life, that is quite a few flights. Corvettes and some other modern cars use aluminum suspension components.
#4. If they are testing to a standard... maybe not so much. Definitely not as bad as car magazine articles. Some of them are thinly veiled ads.
Yeah... welded would not be my favorite, but all engineering is an exercise in choosing the best combination of compromises. What tweaks me is that the level XV was shooting for would have Camaro owners lining up in droves to throw money at the MFG. Kind of like the husband/wife team of ex-GM engineers that are making a go of it with Detroit Speed. In the Mopar world they could not make it.
