DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF A DRIVE SHAFT BY USING COMPOSITE MATERIALS

Mechanical Engineering

Substituting composite structures for conventional metallic structures has many advantages because of higher specific stiffness and strength of composite materials. This work deals with the replacement of conventional two-piece steel drive shafts with a single-piece e-glass/ epoxy, high strength carbon/epoxy and high modulus carbon/epoxy composite drive shaft for an automotive application. Use of advanced composites has resulted in remarkable achievements in many fields including aviation, marine and automobile engineering, medicine, prosthetics and sports, in terms of improved fatigue and corrosion resistances, high specific strength and specific modulus and reduction in energy requirements owing to reduction in weight. The aim of this work is to replace the conventional steel driveshaft of automobiles with an appropriate composite driveshaft. The finite element analysis results are compared with already existed steel drive shaft values and it is observed that the single piece composite drive shaft is suitable for driveline application. The design optimization also showed significant potential improvement in the performance of drive shaft. In this present work an attempt has been to estimate the deflection, shear stresses by using ansys 14.5.

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