Design and Analysis of Composite Drive Shaft for Automotive Application

This paper examines the result of fiber orientation angles and stacking sequence on the torsional stiffness, natural frequency and buckling strength of composite drive shaft. The weight reduction of the drive shaft can have a certain role in the general weight reduction of the vehicle and is a highly desirable goal. Substituting composite structures for conventional metallic structures has many advantages because of higher specific stiffness and strength of composite materials. The advanced composite materials such as graphite, carbon, Kevlar and Glass fibers with suitable resins are widely used because of their high specific strength and high specific modulus. The automotive industry is exploiting composite material technology for structural components construction in order to obtain the reduction of the weight without decrease in vehicle functional quality and reliability. It is known that energy conservation is one of the most important objectives in vehicle design and reduction of weight is one of the most effective measures to obtain this result. Actually, there is almost a direct proportionality between the weight of a vehicle and its fuel consumption, particularly in city driving. In the present work an attempt is made to evaluate the suitability of composite material for the purpose of automotive transmission applications. A composite drive shaft is optimally analyzed using ANSYS for hybrid of high strength carbon fiber, high modulus carbon fiber and Kevlar fiber with Epoxy resin composites with the objective of minimization of weight of the shaft which is subjected to the constraints such as torque transmission, tensional and buckling strength capabilities. The present work includes analysis on drive shaft of Indian car with composite material and concludes that the use of composite materials for drive shaft would induce less amount of stress which additionally reduces the weight of the shaft.