Experimental and numerical behaviour of railway rivets under quasi‐static promptings

The riveting with blind rivets is extensively used in railway structures, which are mainly composed of aluminium. The lack of knowledge in this process makes the railway constructors to over‐proportion the number of rivets used in the structures and to perform a lot of tests in order to validate them. To better understand the different phenomena occurring during this process, a numerical model has been made, based on experimental tests. Considering the diversity of assemblies found in a railway structure (various diameter values of rivet, thickness and multiple materials of sheet metal assemblies, etc.), we propose a methodology based on the simulation of their behaviour. The numerical model allows to avoid high characterisation costs based only on experience.