A STUDY ON THE PROPELLER SHAFT OF CAR USING CARBON COMPOSITE FIBER FOR LIGHT WEIGHT

In this study, a propeller shaft made of carbon composite fiber (T700) was proposed for lightening the propeller shaft. The carbon composite fiber propeller shaft consists of a carbon fiber composite tube and metal flanges. The carbon fiber composite tube was fabricated by mixing the inside of the tube and the outside of the tube with the helical winding method and the hoop winding method, respectively. In this case, the winding angle was set to 54.5 degrees in consideration of the fracture index and the buckling coefficient. The flange, which is the joint, was fabricated by machining the metal into a concave-convex structure and then joining the carbon fiber-composite fiber tube to the concavo-convex portion of the flange and joining it with the bonding material. The finished carbon composite fiber propeller shafts were subjected to balancing work to solve rotational imbalance and passed the existing evaluation criteria as a result of maximum torque, joint strength, eccentricity degree and fatigue endurance test. It was also found that the mass of the proposed propeller shaft was half the mass of the same performance propeller shaft made of metal.