Design of Adhesive Joints for Composite Propeller Shafts

복합재료 동력전달축의 접착조인트 설계

Substituting composite structures for conventional metallic structures has many advantages because of higher specific stiffness and specific strength of composite materials. In this work, one-piece propeller shafts composed of carbonfepoxy and glass/epoxy composites were designed and manufactured for a rear wheel drive automobile satisfying three design specifications, such as static torque transmission capability, torsional buckling and the fundamental natural bending frequency. Single lap adhesively bonded joint was employed to join the composite shaft and the aluminum yoke. For the optimal adhesive joining of the composite propeller shaft to the aluminum yoke, the torque transmission capability of the adhesively bonded composite shaft was calculated with respect to bonding length and yoke thickness by finite element method and compared with the experimental result. Then an optimal design method was proposed based on the failure model which incorporated the nonlinear mechanical behavior of aluminum yoke and epoxy adhesive. From the experiments and FEM analyses, it was found that the static torque transmission capability of composite propeller shaft was maximum at the critical yoke thickness, and it saturated beyond the critical length. Also, it was found that the one-piece composite propeller shaft had 40% weight saving effect compared with a two-piece steel propeller shaft.