ANALYSIS OF NOTCHED SHAFT OF ATV USING COMPOSITE MATERIAL

Notch shaft is the most important component to any power transmission application; automotive notch Shaft is one of this. A notch shaft is a mechanical part that transmits the torque generated by a vehicle's engine into usable motive force to propel the vehicle. Due to higher specific stiffness and strength Composite structures have many advantages over conventional metallic structures. This work deals with the replacement of conventional steel notched shafts with fiberglass epoxy composite notched shaft for an automotive application. With the objective of minimizing the weight of composite notched shaft, the design parameters were optimized. The design optimization also improves the performance of notch shaft. Present work deals with FEA analysis of composite shaft made of glass fibers. It includes the modeling of shaft in CATIA. The meshing and boundary condition application will be carried using Hypermesh; Structural analysis of composite shaft will be carried out using ANSYS. After getting satisfactory results, model is fabricated and tested on UTM. The two results i.e. from numerical and experimental should be in line to each other. The conclusion of the work will be, notched shaft made of composite material will have better strength than conventionally used MS shaft. Using composite material will reduce the weight of the shaft which ultimately helps in increasing efficiency.