Author : Dhiraj D. Patil, Rajaram M. Shinde and Suresh M. Sawant

The drive shaft or propeller shaft is one of the important components in the vehicles. A drive shaft is a rotating shaft
that transmits power from the engine to the differential gear of a rear wheel drive vehicles. Generally an alloy steel
drive shaft is used in automotive, but now a days this steel drive shaft is replaced by composite material drive shaft.
The advanced composite materials such as graphite, carbon, Kevlar and glass with suitable resins are widely used
because of their high specific strength and high specific module. Due to replacement of composite material can results in considerable amount of weight reduction as compared to steel shaft. In this study composite shaft is designed successfully and applied to minimize the weight of shaft which is subjected to the constraints such as torque transmission, critical speed and fundamental natural frequency. This work deals with the replacement of
conventional steel drive shaft with high strength carbon/epoxy composite drive shaft.

Keywords: Driveshaft, Composite driveshaft, Torsional strength, Natural frequency, Weight minimization.

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.6, No.5 (Oct-2016)