About the effects of residual stress states coming from manufacturing processes on the behaviour of riveted joints

A very large number of variables affect the response of bolted or riveted joints typically used in aerospace applications: geometry of the joint, characteristics of the sheets, friction between sheets, geometry of head and kind of fastener, amplitude of clearance before assembly, mounting axial load, pressure effects after manufacture. It must be also recalled that these parameters influence the many failure modes existing for such joints, among which a relevant importance is attributed to bearing. The present paper deals with the study of the influence of assembly parameters on the joint operational behaviour and in particular with the analysis, performed through numerical simulations, of the influence of the residual stress-strain state coming from the riveting operation on the bearing resistance of an aluminium alloy joint. This work has been developed within the FP6 research project called MUSCA (Non linear static multiscale analysis of large aero-structures