Shear loaded fastener installations

The paper is an attempt to review the state of the art in procedures for designing and optimizing bolted or riveted joints. Methods and data desired for the design procedure are defined and compared with what is available today. Following major steps in the design procedure may be identified: Calculation of the force distribution in the joint, which requires methods and data to account for fastener flexibility, excentricities and bending support from surrounding structure. Calculation of the fatigue quality or the fatigue life, which requires that the influence from bypass stress, load transfer and secondary bending on the fatigue performance must be known for various combinations of material qualities (of the joined members), hole qualities and fastener types. Particular attention is paid to experimental techniques and specimen types for determination of fastener flexibility and fatigue data. Some recent findings about the interplay between friction and bearing during fatigue cycling of bolted joints are reviewed. The static design of joints with shear loaded fasteners is treated very briefly.