Rivet Distance

[gniticxe]

Keep in mind that designing to the rivet's failure tensile or shear strength isn't the only thing to consider. Typically, inter-rivet buckling is a dominant failure mode. That is, the material between rivets has enough room to buckle (bend out of plane). Sometimes that's OK, but this is why smaller rivets are typically used with closer spacing.

For airplanes we keep the pitch (distance between) about 4 to 8 times the diameter and reduce the diameter until the total load carrying capability is just met. Though our loading is less impact dominated than FRC.