Abstract:Carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites (CFRP) are widely used in the field of aerospace but it is prone to suffer from riveting damage. This work experimentally investigated the riveting damage behaviors of the CFRP riveted joints with gaskets and evaluated the tensile shearing properties of joints at different width-diameter ratios and edge displacement-diameter ratios. The results demonstrated that the rivet tail’s excessive expansion in the radial direction and extrusion deformation in the axial direction led to high local stress on the CFRP hole and thus riveting damage. The most critical damage occurred on the plies near the riveted head. The gasket can effectively limit the uneven expansion near the rivet tail and can reduce axial stress of the hole surface by dispersing the local axial extrusion force to the gasket coverage area around the hole, which helped reduce riveting damage. The load-displacement response curves of all specimens were dominated by rivets, accompanied by rivet shearing failure. During tensile shearing testing, the gasket was un-deformed but local extrusion damage occurred at the local region near the hole of CFRP along with fiber tensile fracture noise. The width to diameter ratio exhibited an obvious influence on the specimen stiffness and failure strength, while the edge displacement to diameter ratio had little influence on them. In order to explore a more efficient riveting method compared to traditional riveting, this paper focused on CFRP/CFRP composite riveted structures and introduced a novel riveting method with gaskets. Through riveting and tensile-shear tests and microscopic observation of the riveted specimens, it was found that gaskets could reduce riveting damage by suppressing the expansion of the rivet head and dispersing stress around the hole. The width-to-diameter ratio of the riveted specimens had a more significant influence on their stiffness and failure strength compared to the edge-to-diameter ratio. In the tensile-shear tests, all the failure modes of the riveted specimens were rivet fracture.