Civil Engineering - Steel Structure Design - Discussion

If you pull the plates apart, the joint can break in three possible ways:

Shearing — The rivet itself snaps like scissors cutting through it.
Bearing — The metal around the rivet hole gets crushed or damaged.
Tearing — The metal plate tears apart between the rivet holes, like paper tearing through punched holes.

The question asks:

What is the actual strength of such a riveted joint?
Is it the shearing strength?
The bearing strength?
The tearing strength?

Answer: The strength is the least (smallest) of these three strengths.

Reason:

Think of it like a chain made of three different links — one link is steel, one is copper, and one is plastic.
If you pull the chain, it will break at the weakest link, not at the strongest one.

Similarly, in a riveted joint:

Even if the rivet is very strong in shear, the plate might tear first.
Even if the plate is thick (strong in tearing), the rivet might shear first.
The weakest failure mode decides when the whole joint fails.
So, to be safe, engineers calculate all three strengths and then take the lowest value as the actual joint strength.

That’s why option 4. least of (a), (b) and (c) is correct.

Because failure occurs where the strength is least.