“Design and Analysis of Composite Drive Shaft using ANSYS and Genetic Algorithm” A Critical Review

This study deals with the review of optimization of drive shaft using the Genetic Algorithm and ANSYS. Substitution of composite material over the conventional steel material for drive shaft has increasing the advantages of design due to its high specific stiffness and strength. Drive shaft is the main component of drive system of an automobile. Use of conventional steel for manufacturing of drive shaft has many disadvantages such as low specific stiffness and strength. Conventional drive shaft is made up into two parts to increase its fundamental natural bending frequency. Two piece drive shaft increases the weight of drive shaft which is not desirable in today's market. Many methods are available at present for the design optimization of structural systems and these methods based on mathematical programming techniques involving gradient search and direct search. These methods assume that the design variables are continuous. But in practical structural engineering optimization, almost all the design variables are discrete. This is due to the availability of components in standard sizes and constraints due to construction and manufacturing practices. This paper discusses the past work done on composite drive shafts using ANSYS and Genetic Algorithm.