Developing a hybrid, carbon/glass fiber-reinforced, epoxy composite automotive drive shaft

In this study, a finite element analysis was used to design composite drive shafts incorporating carbon and glass fibers within an epoxy matrix. A configuration of one layer of carbon-epoxy and three layers of glass-epoxy with 0 degrees, 45 degrees and 90 degrees was used. The developed layers of structure consists of four layers stacked as [+45 degrees(glass)/-45 degrees glass/0 degrees(glass)/90 degrees(glass)]. The results show that, in changing carbon fibers winding angle from 0 degrees to 90 degrees, the loss in the natural frequency of the shaft is 44.5%, while, shifting from the best to the worst stacking sequence, the drive shaft causes a loss of 46.07% in its buckling strength, which represents the major concern over shear strength in drive shaft design. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.