Rivet optimization in aircraft structures

In this study, rivet optimization is analyzed for a channel section of a fuselage frame. Rivet have crucial roles in aircraft structures. Their usage is for transferring load one to another and making connection between layers. Therefore, there are many studies about rivets and their phenomenon. This optimization analysis is performed in ANSYS Workbench Academic Edition. Rivets are captured by using beam elements which enable to obtain shear forces easily. There are few different aspects of this optimization study such as location of rivets, material of rivets and number of rivets. Before performing to optimization analysis, hand calculation was conducted then different parameters in ANSYS is used to find out optimization options on fuselage frame. While doing this analysis, mesh sensitivity is also studied so as to make sure selected mesh size is capable enough to verify the model compared to hand calculation. Different redesign options in terms of rivet relocations are analyzed, where it gives higher safety margins when rivets get closer to each other in the center point. The second optimization is carried out with using different rivet materials where shear strength of different material takes a critical role. Baseline design has aluminum alloy where the optimization options are checking 3 different rivet materials: Monel, Ti45-Cb and Stainless Steel. The third optimization is conducted with reduced number of rivets; it shows that having the same rivet material does not satisfy the safety margin requirements when the number of rivets are less than 9 which is the baseline design. However, reduced number of rivets design can work well when the rivet material is changed to another one which has higher shear strength than aluminum alloy. By having different approaches of optimizations, it is aimed to give some beneficial outputs for future engineers and researchers for those who is interested in rivets and aircraft structures.