Lightweight Design Of Vehicle Propeller Shaft Based On Topology Optimization Method

The lightweight design of vehicle has always been a hot issue for experts and scholars at home and abroad.The propeller shaft as a key part of the vehicle has also attracted the attention of many scholars.In recent years,although the domestic research on the propeller shaft has achieved certain results,because of the research start late,the lightweight design theory and the strict production and manufacturing system have not been fully established.Compared with similar abroad products,domestic propeller shaft still has much space for improvement in terms of weight and reliability.Therefore,based on the previous studies,this paper has carried out lightweight design research on the propeller shaft of heavy-duty vehicles from two aspects of mechanical structure and material.In the aspect of structure lightweight design of the propeller shaft,the structural design of the flange fork,the spline shaft fork and the universal joint fork of the heavy-duty vehicle propeller shaft was optimized.Firstly,a three-dimensional model of the component was built in Creo2.0,and the ANSYS Workbench was used to analysis structural static.The dangerous section was consistent with the actual fracture location,and the model quality coincides with the physical weighing,thus the three-dimensional model was corrected.Then the variable density method was used to take structural topology analysis for the model.According to the analysis results,the structural were reduced,optimized and verified.In the aspect of material lightweight of the propeller shaft,lightweight design of the flange fork and shaft barrel for propeller shaft by aluminum alloy,magnesium alloy and composite material.Firstly,as the structural optimization design,the three dimensional model was built and then imported into the ANSYS workbench for static analysis to complete the three-dimensional model correction.Then,three different material attributes that aluminum alloy,magnesium alloy and composite are given to the components which were optimized according to the structural optimization design method.Finally,the strength and fatigue of the optimized components were checked.After completing the structure and material optimization of the components of the propeller shaft,overall lightweight design of propeller shaft was carried out according to propeller characteristics.By comparing the quality reduction rate,cost increase rate and safety factor for different schemes,two schemes which as the final solution for the overall optimization design of the propeller shaft was selected,the propeller shaft quality was reduced by 16.1% and 33% respectively.The results show that the application of topology optimization and material lightweight design method can effectively reduce the quality of the propeller shaft and realize the lightweight design of the automobile propeller shaft.