DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF HEAVY VEHICLE REAR AXLE

Abstract

An axle is a central shaft for a rotating wheel. On wheeled vehicles, the axle may be fixed to the wheels, rotating
with them, or fixed to its surroundings, with the wheels rotating around the axle. The axles serve to transmit driving
torque to the wheel, as well as to maintain the position of the wheels relative to each other and to the vehicle body. The
axles in a system must also bear the weight of the vehicle plus any cargo. The rear axle beam is one of the major parts of
vehicle suspension system. It houses the whole back load assembly. About 35 to 65 percent of the total vehicle weight are
taken up by the rear axle.
Hence proper design of the rear axle beam is extremely crucial. In present research work design of the rear axle
of heavy commercial vehicle were done. The approach in this project has been divided into two steps. In the first step,
rear axle will be designed in CREO software later the model is imported into ANSYS for results. In the second step, the
model is assigned with four different materials and the analysis results for the materials are compared to conclude a
suitable material for a rear axle manufacturing.