Experimental and numerical studies on failure modes of riveted joints under tensile load

Though engineers are not advised to utilize riveted joints in tension, rivets will inevitably bear tensile load in realities. Hence, it is interesting to investigate the failure modes of riveted joints when they are under tensile load. Following previous studies (Chen et al., 2011), in this work, the authors selected three sizes of riveted joints to conduct the riveting and tension processes experimentally and numerically. Three kinds of failure modes including pull through, shank breaking, and head breaking were observed. Simulations are able to give almost the same results as those from experiments. Furthermore, three formulas were proposed to calculate the maximum tensile strength of riveted joints. Though the values calculated from these three formulas are approximate, they have the same order of magnitude as real ones. Moreover, they could be utilized to estimate which kind of failure mode may take place when riveted joints were under tensile load.