Numerical Study of the Percussive Riveting Process: Initial Results

Percussive riveting is a dependable assembly method that produces high-quality joints in the aerospace industry. Its successful application is derived from its ease to implement in an assembly floor environment. The rivets are formed on the shank end of the rivet using a forming tool like a bucking bar and the head is constrained and impacted with a rapid succession of hits using a pneumatic gun with a special purpose die head. The rivet forms an interference fit joint because of the residual compressive stresses that are set up in the circumferential direction due to plastic flow of rivet material. These compressive stresses are balanced by tensile stresses in the skin and stiffener bulk material. Compressive stresses in the longitudinal direction help keep the skins pressed together. Research studies focused on the dynamics modeling of the percussive riveting process for robotic automation have not delivered an understanding of the temporal evolution of stress and strain fields in the vicinity of the rivet and the rivet hole. These studies aimed to produce joints of equal strength using automated assembly process compared with the manual assembly process. No modeling efforts have been published up to this point in time. This understanding is important in order to produce joints of predictable strength. A simulation effort for an unstiffened percussive riveting stackup assembly will be undertaken to study the trends of beneficial compressive residual stresses and strains within the bucked rivet. It is our goal to eventually estimate joint strength for prescribed sets of joint assembly parameters. The domain of interest will be restricted to few inches from the rivet axis.