Numerical and experimental analysis of preliminary stress, limiting load capacity and fatigue life of blind rivited joints

This paper presents results of numerical static and fatigue calculations as well as experimental investigations of the lap blind riveted joint. The first port of this study is concerned with numerical analysis of phenomena occurring in the process of blind riveting. In the results of nonlinear computation performed for a joint with one rivet, the initial stress distribution, plot of the riveting force in function of the rivet core displacement and plastic strain distribution were obtained. In the next step, the riveted joint with a defined initial stress state was subjected to shear. The analysis was additionally made for a few models with different numbers of finite elements. The obtained numerical results: load-displacement characteristics and the limiting load capacity for the considered riveted joint were validated in experimental investigation. The next part of the paper presents results of numerical fatigue analysis performed for a riveted joint loaded by a cyclic force. In that computation, the number of cycles to total damage of main joint components was estimated.