Blind pop rivet tensile strength

[philso]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

With respect to rivet material, I was reading somewhere that said you should choose the same material of rivet as the material you are fastening, e.g. aluminum rivets for aluminum plates.

I can understand wanting thermal expansion properties to be the same for construction of long-term, permanent structures like vehicles. But does this apply for FRC robot construction? In other words - why wouldn't I always use, say, steel rivets, for strength?

We ended up using some 3/16" steel rivets in this years robot. The aluminum ones held up just as well and were lighter. We probably had to cut some extra "speed holes" due to the steel rivets we used.