A rivet is a permanent mechanical fastener. Before being installed a rivet consists of a smooth cylindrical shaft with a head on one end. The end opposite the head is called the buck-tail. On installation the rivet is placed in a punched or drilled hole, and the tail is upset, or bucked (i.e., deformed), so that it expands to about 1.5 times the original shaft diameter, holding the rivet in place. To distinguish between the two ends of the rivet, the original head is called the factory head and the deformed end is called the shop head or buck-tail.
Because there is effectively a head on each end of an installed rivet, it can support tension loads (loads parallel to the axis of the shaft); however, it is much more capable of supporting shear loads (loads perpendicular to the axis of the shaft). Bolts and screws are better suited for tension applications.
Fastenings used in traditional wooden boat building, like copper nails and clinch bolts, work on the same principle as the rivet but were in use long before the term rivet came about and, where they are remembered, are usually classified among the nails and bolts respectively.
Read more about Rivet: Types, Sizes, Applications, Joint Analysis, Alternatives
Famous quotes containing the word rivet:
“Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Time has an undertaking establishment on every block and drives his coffin nails faster than the steam riveters rivet or the stenographers type or the tickers tick out fours and eights and dollar signs and ciphers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)