Process Capability Based Tolerance Allocation in Pneumatic Percussive Riveting

Pneumatic percussive riveting is an important way to join the sheet metals. In order to ensure the load transfer and the fatigue performance of riveted joint, the interference of the rivet/hole is strictly specified. The interference of the rivet/hole is highly correlated with the process capability of the pneumatic hammer and the diameter of the pre-hole. It is a critical step to choose the appropriate pneumatic hammer to ensure the interference requirements. Energy per blow of the pneumatic hammer is a proclaimed parameter from the riveting hammer manufacturer. It is difficult for the designer to choose the riveting hammer in practical riveting scheme based on energy per blow. Tolerance analysis is an efficient way to model the manufacturing variation and implement process control. This paper presents the tolerance allocation of the pneumatic percussive riveting based on the process capability of the pneumatic hammer. In order to obtain the designed interferences of the rivet/hole, a tolerance chain is built with the process capability of the pneumatic hammer, the diameter of the pre-hole and the diameter of the rivet shank. The process capability of the pneumatic hammer is represented with the interferences of the rivet/hole after riveting. It is an intuitive parameter for the designer to choose the riveting hammer in practical riveting scheme. The process capability of the pneumatic hammer is obtained from the designed riveting experiments with the pneumatic percussive riveting platform. The diameter of the pre-hole affects the interference of the rivet/hole also. The tolerance for manual hole-drilling should be determined to assure the interference requirements and high drilling operation efficiency simultaneously. The variation of the pre-hole is obtained from the manual drilling experiments and diameter measurements. Different hole-drilling results in different mating conditions between the pre-hole and the rivet. The fit conditions of different pre-holes are modeled and the final interferences after riveting are analyzed. Worst case method and statistical analysis method are two common methods for tolerance analysis. For the manual hole-drilling and the pneumatic percussive riveting, worst case method is employed to analyze the constructed tolerance chain in order to accomplish the interferences of the rivet/hole. The different analyzed dimensions, rivet-hole clearances and pre-hole drilling variation, are investigated respectively. The reported work enhances the understanding of the tolerance allocation for the pneumatic percussive riveting. The interference based process capability of the pneumatic hammer provides good reference for pneumatic hammer choosing in riveting scheme. The reported tolerance chain of the interference could be used for the tolerance determination of manual hole-drilling with good quality and high efficiency.