Dynamic Characteristics of a Hybrid Composite Drive Shaft for Automotive Application

Composite material is a breakthrough in engineering especially in automotive
application. Automotive parts which being produced by this material always performs
better compare to conventional material. D.G. Lee et al. (2004) states that, drive shaft
being produced by composite material offers up to 75% of weight reduction which will
contribute to fuel efficiency, 160% increase in torque capability, and higher natural
frequency which is about 9390 rpm for wider safety margin. The main constraint for
using composite is the higher price of material especially the fiber. The main idea for
this study is to replace the carbon fiber with much cheaper material, palm oil fiber. This
new composite will later on being put into test using machine fault simulator at four
different speeds and its dynamic characteristic will be recorded. The data obtained will
be analyzed using skewness, kurtosis, peak to peak, crest factor and root mean square
(RMS). From experimental results, we can see that lower RMS value is obtained for
composite drive shaft compare to steel drive shaft with same diameter. Thus, it shows
that the composite material is a suitable candidate to substitute the usage of steel as
material for drive shaft for automotive application in term of vibration study.