The aim of this investigation is to establish a universal, accurate and efficient fracture criterion for ductile metals. First, new experiments including pure torsion, uniaxial tension followed by torsion and non-proportional biaxial compression on the Al 2024-T351 alloy are presented. These experimental results, along with published data on same material by Stoughton and Yoon (2011), are used to establish a phenomenological fracture criterion using the magnitude of stress vector and the first invariant of stress tensor. The results are compared to, and shown better than, the maximum shear stress fracture criterion proposed by Stoughton and Yoon, J₂ fracture criterion and the Xue–Wierzbicki fracture criterion. Moreover, the proposed fracture criterion is used to correlate the ductile fracture data of another aluminium alloy published by Brünig et al. (2008).