Mechanical and fatigue properties of self-piercing riveted joints in high-strength steel and aluminium alloy

Abstract

Static tensile and fatigue tests were performed on shear and tensile self-piercing riveted aluminium-steel structures to evaluate their mechanical and fatigue properties. The influences of the thickness and the strength of the high-strength steel on mechanical and fatigue performances were investigated based on the tensile and F-N curves of the joints. The results show that mechanical and fatigue properties of the shear self-piercing riveted joints are much better than those of the tensile self-piercing riveted joints. Mechanical and fatigue performances of the two joints were significantly influenced by the thickness and strength of the steel sheet, and were markedly improved when the thickness of steel sheet increased. The steel strength showed significantly different effects on shear and tensile riveted structures, i. e., when the steel strength increased, the strength of the shear structure greatly increased while the tensile structure just had a slight increase in the strength. Fatigue failure generally occurred in the sheet materials and the fatigue crack location changed with increasing the sheet thickness and the sheet strength.