Stainless Rivets Solve Window Problem
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THE MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO NICKEL AND ITS APPLICATIONS |
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Residential apartments in Singapore are getting more secure windows. |
Stainless steel rivets to replace aluminum ones.
By Carroll McCormick
Nickel Magazine, November 2004 -- Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA), together with the Asian republic’s Housing and Development Board (HDB), has launched a program to replace nine million aluminum rivets with stainless steel ones in the windows in 43,000 HBD flats.
Between 2000 and 2003, at least 190 window cases installed by HBD fell out of flats because aluminum rivets failed to hold the friction stays in the window casements. Corrosion and wear-and-tear, as windows are opened and closed, caused the failures. To solve the problem, the BCA is retrofitting using more durable and corrosion-resistant stainless steel rivets.
The stainless rivets, which vary in length from 10 to 17 millimetres (mm) and are 4.8 mm in diameter, will be made from S30400. All have in a tensile strength roughly three times that of the aluminum rivets.
The aluminum rivets were used for installing casement windows between 1987 and 1998 under the then-prevailing industry standards in Singapore and in effect internationally, according to HBD. Revised industry standards specifying stainless rivets were adopted in 2000, though HBD switched to using them in 1998. The replacement program will run from March 2004 to February 2005.
Carroll McCormick is a Montreal-based freelance writer.
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Mr. Tan Kok Chuan |
