Part 3: Bearing Stress

A. ACTUAL STRESS. (In this section, the examples are about solving the actual stress acting on
the member).

Bearing Stress, σ b , is a special type of normal stress that results from the contact pressure
between separate bodies.

Applied force P
σ b= =
Area of contact ( D )(t)

where: P = force applied; D = diameter of the connector and t is the thickness of the plate

If the two plates are consistently pulled in opposite directions as in the figure above, it
will come to a time that the hole around the connector (bolt, rivet, pin) will become very large
and it would no longer fits the hole. This is especially true when the connector is strong
enough not to fail first in shearing. The pictures below are examples of failure in bearing. The
bearing stress is large enough that the hole becomes very large like that below:
Example 1a-11. The lap joint is connected by three 20-mm-diameter rivets. Assuming that the
axial load P = 50 kN is distributed equally among the three rivets, find:

a. the shear stress in a rivet;

b. the bearing stress between a plate and a rivet; and
c. the maximum average tensile stress in each plate.
Solution:

For a:

Step 1. Analyze the figure. Each bolt is sheared singly. But there are three of them so then it
becomes:

Single shear
D rivets =20 mm
V P
τ= =
A 3 Arivets
There are 3 rivets

τ=
P
=
50 kN ( 1000 N
1 kN )
3 A rivets π
3x ( 202 ) mm2
4