INTRODUCTION

In the developing world consumers and policymakers of automobile demand a high environmental performance without compromising safety, amenity, driving performance, and cost. A key enabling technology is the composites material technology. To date, the results have proven that the usage of composite materials is economically advantageous while outperforming other materials in weight savings, strength, stiffness and occupants safety during vehicle crashes. Advanced composite materials such as graphite, carbon, Kevlar and glass with suitable resins are widely used because of high specific strength and high specific modulus and seem ideally suited for long power driver shaft applications. Research and development for the development of a composite driveshaft began in 1962 by the [Spicer Universal Joint Division of Dana Corporation (1962)], but the project was dropped in the mid '60s because of lack of technology throughout the industry. Research resumed in 1975, and in 1986 Spicer Universal Joint Division of Dana developed the graphite/aluminum tube design and brought the project to Strongwell. The Spicer Graph Lite driveshaft made its market debut in 1987 on General Motors 1988 model GMT-400 pickup trucks, for which the production began in October, 1986. Nowadays, at commercial level, drive shafts are being manufactured by new pultrusion equipment and technology. A composite of fibreglass, graphite and a special resin is pultruded directly onto the seamless aluminium tube. This composite reinforces the tube, as well as its four-fold specific stiffness than steel renders almost a two-fold natural frequency, which serves

to suppression of vibration and elimination of the need for centre bearings. This has been discussed in detail in Section 3.3. 1.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM Almost all automobiles which correspond to design with rear wheel drive and front engine installation, have transmission shafts. 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, if it can be achieved without decrease in quality and reliability. It is possible to achieve design of composite drive shaft with less weight to maximize the torque transmission. Transfer of power train noise and vibration to the passenger compartment had been a significant area of research for most of the automobile manufacturers. This noise and vibration concern could be greatly dealt with by utilizing inherent dampening characteristics of composite material and less rotating mass. Composite material will also cater to the purpose of protection of driveline against deterioration from corrosion, thus adding up to the longevity of the mechanical components. The elastic properties can be tailored to increase the torque they can carry as well as rotational speed at which they operate. The drive shafts are used in automotive, aircraft and aerospace applications. There is almost a direct proportionality between the weight of the vehicle, its fuel consumption and the composite technology has been of a great help in reducing the weight of the vehicle without decrease in vehicle quality and reliability. 1.2 AIM AND SCOPE OF WORK This work deals with the replacement of a conventional steel drive shaft with EGlass/Epoxy composite drive shafts for an automobile application. The driveshaft tube is to be developed as a direct response to industry demand for greater performance and efficiency in light trucks, vans and high performance automobiles.

Most significantly, the work highlights a general method for customized design of driveshaft performance based upon vehicle use and power train systems. 1.3 FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF DESIGN In industries, the product, once developed, is generally tested by simulating 20 years of vehicle life before it reached the market. Limited research and absence of literature on accurate strength determination of composite structures poses a major problem in analysis of composite shafts under torsion. Pertaining to this, Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) solutions have come up with alternatives which provide soft-solutions for analysis of composite structures, which not only saves the testing cost but also saves the time and workmanship involved in the product development cycle. Such a software based solution for analysis of proposed design has been carried out in this work. Static analysis is to be carried out on the finite element model of the composite drive shaft using NISA. The first step in the process of analysis is to capture the geometry of the shaft. This usually consists of a mathematical description of the boundary and interior of the model. Once the geometric domain of the shaft is described, the next step consists of discretizing this domain to define a mesh of nodes and elements. The solver of the software package, NISA here, solves for displacement at each node defined on the model, based on finite-element set of mathematical equations in accordance with the material properties and other geometric constraints. Graphical representation and manipulation of the results may be performed interactively using the post processing module available in NISA. The accuracy of the result

predictions is dependent on the mesh quality of the model. Therefore, the finer is the mesh defined, the results are more near-practical, the more design beneficial it would be for the industry.

The stress distributions in drive shaft laminate derived from Classical Lamination Theory (CLT) based theoretical calculations have been derived from another software package, called LAMINATOR. It provides layer wise stress variation for a given layup configuration of a laminate. The LAMINATOR outputs can be compared with the post-processing layer stress variation results from NISA. This will help establishing a deviation of software based experimental results from theory based calculations, thus contributing to the work on reliability of application of finite element methods in design and analysis of light weight composite shafts.

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

The overall review involved the survey of various articles by leading authors, mainly the research done on composite shaft and shells till now, to be precise, on the type of testing, analysis done and complicating effects of the material and the various theories used. Different theories such as thin shell, thick shell; 3-D theories, linear and non linear theories etc, and analysis procedures such as static torsion and buckling have been included. Metallic structures exhibit material properties that are related only to the modulus of elasticity and Poissons ratio of the material. Composite materials exhibit the properties of orthotropy where several material constants exist. A typical orthotropic layer can have nine material constants in the analysis of laminated composites. In addition, unsymmetrical laminates exhibit coupling, i.e., stretching-bending, stretching-twisting, shearing-bending and shearingtwisting, when loaded dynamically. Research is directed towards the interpretation of results and finding new applications for composite shell structures. 2.1 COMPOSITE SHELLS The increased use of laminated composite shells in many engineering applications has generated much interest in composite shell behaviour. A brief overview of the various theories, methods and analysis used for composite shells has been given here. A shell is a threedimensional body connected by two parallel (unless the thickness is varying) surfaces. In general, the distance between those surfaces is small compared with other shell parameters. For the development of the constitutive relations, the laminated composite thin shells are assumed to

be composed of plies of unidirectional long bars embedded in a matrix material such as epoxy resin. Macroscopically, each layer may be regarded as being homogeneous and orthotropic. If the shell thickness is less than 1/20th of the radii of curvature, a thin-shell theory, where shear deformation and rotary inertia are negligible, is generally acceptable. Depending on various assumptions made during the derivation of the straindisplacement relations, stress strain relations, and the equilibrium equations, various thin shell theories can be derived. Descriptions of these and other thin shell theories can be found. All these theories were initially derived for isotropic shells and expanded later for laminated composite shells by applying the appropriate integration through laminas, and stressstrain relations. The widespread usage and ease of manufacturing of cylindrical shells are undoubtedly the reason for such attention. Other shell geometries have also been investigated. Among those receiving considerable attention are shallow shells and conical shells. Shallow shells are open shells with rectangular, triangular, trapezoidal, circular, elliptical, rhombic or other plane forms. They are used frequently as panels in aerospace and submarine industries. 2.2 COMPOSITE SHELLS UNDER TORSION AND BUCKLING [Shokrieh, (2003)] worked on the shear buckling of a composite shaft under torsion. After reviewing the closed form solution methods to calculate the buckling torque of composite drive shafts, a finite element analysis is performed to study their behaviour. To evaluate the results obtained by the finite element method, a comparison with experimental and analytical results has been presented, which concludes that boundary conditions of the shaft did not have much effect on the buckling torque. Fibre orientation and stacking sequence strongly affect the buckling torque. It has also been concluded that by increasing the applied torque on a shaft, the

square of the natural frequencies decreases linearly, decreases the natural frequencies of torsion and does not change the other modes of vibration. [Badie, (2010)] examined the effect of fibre orientation angles and stacking sequence on the torsion stiffness, natural frequency, buckling strength, fatigue life and failure modes of composite tubes. Finite element analysis (FEA) has been used to predict the fatigue life of composite drive shaft using linear dynamic analysis for different stacking sequence. Experimental program on scaled woven fabric composite models was carried out to investigate the torsion stiffness. Experimentally, composite tubes of fibre orientation angles of 45 show higher load carrying capacity and higher torsion stiffness. Specimens of carbon/epoxy or glass/epoxy composites with fibre orientation angles of 45 exhibit catastrophic failure mode. In a hybrid of both materials, [45]s laminate configuration influenced the failure mode. [Huang and Dong (1999)] studied the axially symmetric deformations. A procedure has been presented for the analysis of stresses and deformations in a laminated circular cylinder of perfectly bonded materials with the most general form of cylindrical anisotropy. Axis-symmetric loading conditions include an axial force and torque on the ends as well as a general distribution of surface tractions of pressure, circumferential shear and longitudinal shear. 2.3 COMPOSITE DRIVESHAFTS AND OPTIMIZATION [Mutasher (2007)] predicted the torsion strength of the hybrid aluminium/composite drive shaft. Maximum torsion capacity of the hybrid aluminium/composite shaft consisting of aluminium tube wound outside by E-glass and carbon fibres/epoxy composite for different layup variables. The finite element analysis has been carried out using ANSYS to analyze the hybrid shaft under static torsion, which concluded that increasing the number of layers increases the static torque capacity of the hybrid shaft. A hybrid aluminium composite wound with fibres at

45 angle can withstand higher static torsion compared to 90 in all cases. A shaft with stacking sequence of [90/+45/+45/90] and [+45/45/90/90] gave the same behaviour of torque to angle of twist relation, which is in agreement with the laminate theory. [Rangaswamy et al (2004)] worked on the design optimization of composite laminates to minimize the weight of structure that is subjected to certain load constraints. Genetic Algorithm (GA) techniques have resulted in considerable amount of weight saving in the range of 48 to 86 % when compared to conventional steel shaft. [Lawrie (2007)] provided a description of the trade-off required between axial, bending, and torsion stiffness plus torque density and manufacturability. A methodology was developed by which all composite flexible drive shafts can be designed and produced to take advantage of both part count reduction, and overall weight savings approaching 50%. 2.4 WORK RELEVANT TO DESIGN OF DRIVESHAFTS [Chowdhuri et al (2010)] proposed two designs of composite shaft , one design is purely from Graphite/Epoxy lamina and other is hybrid shaft using Aluminium with Graphite/Epoxy. The basic requirements considered are torsional strength, torsional buckling and bending natural frequency. The design is optimised to get a shaft which is cheapest and lightest but meets all of the load requirements. If cost is the main consideration then the hybrid shaft can also give better performance. The optimised design of composite shaft using Graphite/Epoxy has orientation [0/90/0/45/90/-45]s. The design proposed does not fail catastrophically and after first ply fails, they can be repaired. [Khoshravan (2011)] in his paper aims to replace one piece composite drive with two piece composite shaft. Design of composite drive shaft is divided into two sections: design of composite shaft and design of coupling. In this paper, the design parameters like critical speed,

static torque and adhesive joints have been studied. The behaviour of materials are considered nonlinear isotropic for adhesive, linear isotropic for metals and orthotropic for composite shaft. The analysis of shaft is performed using the ANSYS software. The paper shows that the weight of the shaft can be reduced by 72% using composite shaft in place of conventional steel shaft and the fiber orientation has great influence on dynamic characteristics of shaft. [Cho (2011)] in his paper, has designed a hybrid one-piece drive shaft composed of Carbon fiber-Epoxy composite and Aluminium tube by co-curing the carbon fibre on the aluminium tube. The natural bending frequency of the drive shaft can be increased without reducing the torque transmission capability, if the shaft is made using both carbon fibre composite and aluminium. From the dynamic test it was found that the first natural bending frequency and minimum static torque transmission capability of the shaft were 9000rpm and 35000 N-m, respectively and the shaft did not fail until 107 cycles under a dynamic load of 500Nm.