Bending fatigue behavior of hybrid aluminum/composite drive shafts

Through out this experimental study, a bending fatigue analysis was carried out for hybrid aluminum/composite drive shafts. The hybrid shafts used were fabricated using filament winding technique. Glass fiber with a matrix of epoxy resin and hardener were used to construct the external composite layers needed. Four cases were studied using aluminum tube wounded by different layers of composite materials and different stacking sequence or fiber orientation angles. The failure mode for all the hybrid shafts was identified. The macroscopic level tests indicate that the cracks initiating in the zones free of fibers or in the outer skin of resin and increase with increasing number of cycles until the failure of specimen. It has also been noticed that there is no fiber breakage from the rotating bending fatigue test. Results obtained from this study show that increasing the number of layers would enhance the fatigue strength of aluminum tube up to 40%, for [±45]3s.