Stress Analysis of Rear Axle Pick-up with Finite Element Method

The axle shaft wheel is the drive wheel shaft which functions to transmit power from the differential to the wheel. The rear wheels generally support heavier loads than the front wheels, consequently the wheel drive shaft construction is also relatively stronger. The method used was FEM with the help of ANSYS software. Based on the simulation results obtained the greatest stress value at Maximum principal stress is 365.02 Mpa. The results of crack analysis obtained J-Integral of 7,319 x 10⁻⁷ and based on the SIFS value (K1) showed the crack intensity every 1 mm2 was 0.34317 Mpa. material safety factor was 1.51 which indicates that the material is in good category. Means the fracture of the rear axle shaft occurs because of other factors between caused by a momentary shock load that is large enough or defective due to the fabrication process. (paper)