Dynamics Performance and Abrasive Wear of the Automotive Drive Shaft

An automotive drive shaft is used in a front drive transmission vehicle for transmitting rotary movement from the gearbox output shaft to the wheels with a constant velocity. This paper presents the kinematic model of ball joint and tripod joint with consideration of clearance and proposes a simplified dynamics model of the drive shaft. The simulation of the dynamics model is given by the measured data. Also, the abrasive wear of the ball type joint is tested on the experimental setup with consideration of full loading. The results show that the dynamics of the motion will be affected by the clearance when the loading changes its direction. The motion will be stable due to the damping. It can be found that the abrasive wear of ball joint largely depends on the relative sliding velocity from the experiments. This will probably affectthe dynamics performance and the impact force, which will also cause the other type of failures.