Influence of angles of fiber orientation on improving the characteristics of composite cardan shaft using factorial experiment

Composite shafts in compare with steel ones are characterized by lower weight, lower values of stress and deformation, extremely harmonic vibration damping and higher values of natural frequencies. The analysis of the optimal design of composite cardan shafts has shown that the load capacity of shaft is greatly influenced by type of material and the angle of orientation of the fibers. In this study the influence of the fiber orientation in layers of the composite laminar cardan shaft of truck on the angle of twist using a factorial experiment was analyzed. Analyzed shaft is composed of nine layers wherein the first layer is of aluminum, and the rest of carbon/epoxy composites with different angles of fiber orientation (-45°, 0°, 45° and 90°). By using the factorial experiment the optimal variant angles of fiber orientation is obtained and the effect of each layer on the angle of twist of drive shaft. The results obtained show that the factorial experiment could be applied on optimization of composite cardan shaft which influences on the improvement of the characteristics of the screw shaft. (paper)