Abstract
Experiments were carried out to study the static torsion capability of a hybrid aluminum/ composite drive shaft. A hybrid shaft was fabricated using a wetted filament winding method by winding glass and carbon fibres onto aluminum tube with different winding angles, numbers of layers and stacking sequence. The torque-angle-of-twist response was obtained and the failure modes of the hybrid shaft were studied. The results show that the static torque capacity for a winding angle of 45o is larger than it is for 90o, for both glass and carbon fibres. For [+45/-45]3s laminates, the maximum static torsion for carbon fibres is approximately 36% higher than for the glass fibres. The aluminum tube yielded first at the central region of the shaft, followed by crack propagation in the composite shaft along the fibre direction, which eventually caused delamination of the composite layers from the aluminum tube. Then the white regions appeared in the composite layer and finally the fibres broke and the catastrophic failure took place. For a hybrid shaft wound with fibre configurations of[90/+45/-45/90] and [+45/-45/90/90], the torque-angle-of-twist response results were similar and this satisfied the Classical Lamination Plate Theory. In addition, the torque capacity increased approximately 14 fold for the case of an aluminum tube wound with six layers of the carbon fibre and a winding angle of 45° compared to the aluminum tube alone.