Why Is There A Lot Of Riveting And Not Welding In Aircraft Manufacturing?

In the manufacture of a large aircraft, the number of rivets used is as many as hundreds of thousands or even millions, there are many ways to connect multiple parts, such as the use of rivets to connect, referred to as riveting; Connecting metal by heating high temperature or high pressure, referred to as welding; Use screws and nuts to connect, referred to as screw joint; So why are they riveting airplanes instead of welding them, or whatever? There are three main reasons for this:

1. Lightweight materials such as composite materials are not suitable for welding

There is a saying in the aviation industry: “Fight for every gram of weight.” To reduce the weight of the aircraft, the aircraft manufacturing will use the lightest possible materials according to local conditions, and these materials in addition to steel structure are more suitable for welding, aluminum alloy is not appropriate for welding, and composite materials will also be damaged by welding, and the interconnection of different materials must be physically fixed.

2. Weld prone to metal fatigue problems

Civil aircraft usually have to serve for more than ten years, and the weld is prone to metal fatigue, making the connection effect poor.

First of all, in the welding process, the welding metal is affected by different heat dissipation rates, which will produce deformation and great internal stress, and the structure is easily damaged under complex load and stress conditions. In addition, because welding is a metal reprocessing process, the mechanical properties of the metal near the weld will be significantly weakened with the base metal, becoming the weakness of the aircraft structure, and this change can not be measured, so the general aircraft less use of welding.

3. Riveting more reliable and stable

The reliability and consistency of riveting are much higher than that of welding or screw bonding, and the quality of welding depends largely on the skill of the operator, while the connection strength of riveting is relatively stable and reliable, the error of the parameters is minimal, and it is easy to carry out quality control and standardized production, if there is an operation error, you can also replace the rivets.

Because riveting is suitable for metal structural connections subject to large impact or vibration loads, this high-efficiency connection can strengthen the stability of the structure, and the weight saved by millions of rivets is also very considerable.

The role of aviation rivets in the aircraft is like connecting the soft tissue between the human skeleton, if people do not have soft tissue, the skeleton is also useless, so the importance of aviation rivets can be seen.

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