Development and Analysis of Carbon-fiber shaft

Abstract

Due to High strength to weight ratio of carbon fiber composite provides higher natural frequency and can provide excellent performance instead of conventional steel shaft. This project mainly deals with the development and analysis of carbon fiber shaft for cooling tower coupling made by available resources at Kemrock Industries and Exports Limited, Vadodara. The company having 2-axis filament winding process and pull winding process machinery to manufacture shaft.

In this work, semi-empirical micromechanics approach based on Halpin-Tsai model is used to predict strength data for manufactured shaft. Comparison of theoretical and practical data is done to validate the results.

The output of this method is final shaft design and rovings arrangement required to manufacture an optimum shaft. The product is developed with pull-winding process. To validate analytical results, FEA cum laminate solver Hypersizer is used here. Also FEA results with ansys solver is shown here. Finally adhesive joint design is discussed here.