What is the shear strength of a Rivet?

Understanding shear strength is crucial when selecting rivets for aerospace applications. It directly impacts a rivet's ability to withstand sliding forces and contributes to the aircraft's structural integrity, fatigue resistance, and overall safety. While tensile strength also plays a role, shear strength generally determines a rivet's ability to withstand the stresses of flight-critical areas, such as wing assemblies and fuselage joints.

Rivets play a vital role in the aerospace industry. These heavy-duty fasteners are used to create permanent connections in aircraft and other types of aircraft. For example, a typical Boeing 737 has approximately 200,000 rivets. However, when purchasing aerospace rivets, you should consider their shear strength.

What is the shear strength?

Shear strength is a measure of rivet strength. More specifically, it represents a rivet's ability to resist sliding forces. The higher a rivet's shear strength, the greater its ability to resist sliding forces.

Shear Strength vs. Tensile Strength: What's the Difference?

Contrary to popular belief, shear strength and tensile strength are not the same. They are both strength-based metrics, but they represent different properties of the rivet or material.

Shear strength indicates a rivet's ability to resist slipping, while tensile strength indicates its ability to resist pulling out. Tensile strength essentially measures the force required to pull a rivet apart. If a rivet is subjected to a force exceeding its rated tensile strength, it may break.

The key difference between shear strength and tensile strength is that the former indicates a rivet's ability to resist slipping, while the latter indicates its ability to resist breaking.

Why is shear strength so important?

When purchasing aerospace rivets, you cannot ignore shear strength. Like most fasteners, rivets are used to fasten two or more components together. Some of these components, such as wing roots, are subject to significant shear forces.

Shear forces can push one rivet-held component in one direction and another rivet-held component in the opposite direction. If the shear strength of rivets is too low, they may fail due to slippage.

Shear strength is closely related to fatigue resistance. Rivets with high shear strength can generally withstand repeated stress for longer periods of time than rivets with low shear strength.

Another reason shear strength is important is safety. Aircraft components like rivets have strict safety specifications. They must be designed and manufactured to meet these specifications, including the shear strength of certain rivets.