Design, Failure Analysis and Optimization of a Propeller Shaft for Heavy Duty Vehicle

The power transmission system is the system which causes movement of vehicles by transferring the torque produced by the engines to the wheels after some modifications. The transfer and modification system of vehicles is called as power transmission system. The power transmission system of vehicles consists of several components which encounter unfortunate failures. Propeller shaft and the universal joints form the important links that help in transmitting power from the engine to the wheels. In this study, analysis is being performed on the universal joint yoke and the propeller shaft. In the universal joint yoke, certain modifications are made in the existing geometry and analyzed for the identical loading and boundary conditions as in the reference paper from which the problem has been taken. It was observed that from the static analysis that the roots of the splines are the areas of high stress concentration. The fatigue analysis revels that the drive shaft fails in the region of high stress concentration as expected. In this project the propeller shaft of TATA 1210 was investigated for failures. Considering the system, torque acting on a shaft used to calculate the Stress analysis by using FEA and the results were compared with the calculated values. The stress in the shaft was exceeding the endurance limit causing failure in shaft, the shaft may have failed prematurely due to fatigue loads before the average life of truck. Thus it was important to redesign the shaft so that the induced stress is less than the endurance limit