CAD-Integrated Finite Element Analysis of Fiber Orientation and Stacking Sequence Effects on Composite Beam Strength

Abstract

Composite drive shafts fabricated from E-Glass/Epoxy and High Modulus (HM) Carbon/Epoxy laminates were evaluated as lightweight replacements for conventional steel shafts in automotive transmission systems. A four-layered hollow cylindrical shaft configuration was developed and subjected to both static structural and modal analyses using ANSYS 13 finite element software, with SHELL281 elements employed to represent the layered composite architecture. Static analysis investigated the influence of individual ply fiber orientation varied in increments of 10° from 0° to 90° on layer-wise shear stress distribution and total axial deformation, while keeping the remaining three layers fixed at 0°. Modal analysis subsequently extracted the first six natural bending frequencies for each orientation configuration. Results indicate that the composite shaft achieves approximately 50% mass reduction over a geometrically equivalent steel shaft while simultaneously exhibiting markedly lower maximum equivalent stress and substantially higher natural frequencies across all bending modes. Third-order polynomial regression models were developed in MATLAB to correlate fiber angle orientation with the computed mechanical responses, yielding design equations that enable rapid parametric exploration without repeated finite element computations. Comparative evaluation confirms that the carbon/glass-epoxy configuration surpasses structural steel in both torsional performance and dynamic stability under identical boundary conditions. Fiber angle orientation emerges as the dominant design parameter, and the regression framework provides a computationally efficient tool for optimizing lightweight drivetrain components.