Structural Design and Dynamic Analysis of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic Shaft with Metal Parts

Abstract

It is important to improve dynamic performance of rotating machinery by reducing the mass of shaft and increasing the natural frequency. Many studies have focused on dynamic characteristics of shaft in rotating machinery with the utilization of composite material. This paper mainly investigates the structural design and dynamic analysis of a CFRP/Metal hybrid shaft. The finite element method (FEM) has been used to determine the selection of design variables include fiber orientation angle, layers stacking sequence and layers thickness. Also, experimental test was carried out using a FFT analyzer with impact hammers. The differences between the FEM analysis result and the experiment test result were respectively less than 4.5% and 6.3% for the first two natural frequencies; therefore, the results of FEM analysis are acceptable. The results reveal that the fiber orientation angle is the most significant factor affecting the dynamic characteristics of CFRP/Metal hybrid shaft. In addition, there have some effect of the layer stacking sequence on natural frequency.