page_title: Rivet
section_title: Applications
hierarchical_section_title: Rivet / Applications
caption_attribution_description: General Hertzog Bridge over Orange River at Aliwal North, Eastern Cape. The bridge consists of four simply supported trusses with extensive use of rivets to brace and connect members.
context_page_description: A rivet is a permanent mechanical fastener. Before being installed, a rivet consists of a smooth cylindrical shaft with a head on one end. The end opposite to the head is called the tail. On installation, the rivet is placed in a punched or drilled hole, and the tail is upset, or bucked, so that it expands to about 1.5 times the original shaft diameter, holding the rivet in place. In other words, the pounding or pulling creates a new "head" on the other end by smashing the "tail" material flatter, resulting in a rivet that is roughly a dumbbell shape. To distinguish between the two ends of the rivet, the original head is called the factory head and the deformed end is called the shop head or buck-tail.
  Because there is effectively a head on each end of an installed rivet, it can support tension loads. However, it is much more capable of supporting shear loads.
  Fastenings used in traditional wooden boat building, such as copper nails and clinch bolts, work on the same principle as the rivet but were in use long before the term rivet was introduced and, where they are remembered, are usually classified among nails and bolts respectively.
context_section_description: Before welding techniques and bolted joints were developed, metal framed buildings and structures such as the Eiffel Tower, Shukhov Tower and the Sydney Harbour Bridge were generally held together by riveting, as were automobile chassis. Riveting is still widely used in applications where light weight and high strength are critical, such as in an aircraft. Many sheet-metal alloys are preferably not welded as deformation and modification of material properties can occur.
  A large number of countries used rivets in the construction of armored tanks during World War II, including the M3 Lee (General Grant) manufactured in the United States. However, many countries soon learned that rivets were a large weakness in tank design, since if a tank was hit by a large projectile it would dislocate the rivets and they would fly around the inside of the tank and injure or kill the crew, even if the projectile did not penetrate the armor. Some countries such as Italy, Japan, and Britain used rivets in some or all of their tank designs throughout the war for various reasons, such as lack of welding equipment or inability to weld very thick plates of armor effectively.
  Blind rivets are used almost universally in the construction of plywood road cases.
  Common but more exotic uses of rivets are to reinforce jeans and to produce the distinctive sound of a sizzle cymbal.
caption: A riveted truss bridge over the Orange River
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