Al-Qadisiya Journal For Engineering Sciences, Vol. 5, No. 4, 377-393, Year 2012 377 COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN OF RIVETS FOR STEAM BOILER SHELLS M.Sc. Farah Kamil Abid Muslim Dr. Essam L. Esmail Department of Mechanics Department of Mechanical Engineering Technical Institute/ Dewanya College of Engineering, University of Qadisiya Dewaniya, Iraq Dewaniya, Iraq Farah_saleh77@yahoo.com Dr.essamesmail@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Most mechanical CAD software used in mechanical design involves different types of decisions. All these decisions require coordinate-geometric and descriptive data. The objective of this work is to establish software programs for designing and analyzing rivets for boiler shells as an example to use rivets in industry. In general rivets are considered as mechanical elements of wide range application. A software program using Visual Basic Version 5 with ACCESS database is used for design of rivets. When the user inters the input data to the system and depending on existing database, the software carries out a series of complex computations, after which it produces a comprehensive report that includes all engineering dimensions and efficiency. The program, designed in this research, has feasible ability to deal with data base in an easy and reliable way especially for unprofessional users. This is a database that can be updated and edited at any time to get proper results. The program can be applied also to different types of riveted joint. KEYWORDS: CAD, Mechanical design. boiler shell rivet ACCESS