What is Drive Shaft?
A drive shaft is a most important part of a vehicle that transfers torque from the transmission to the differential, and then the differential delivers this torque to the front wheels to run the vehicle. The drive shaft is also known as a Cardan shaft, propeller shaft, or prop shaft.
In simple words, the main function of the propeller or drive shaft is to deliver the engine torque from the differential to the vehicle wheel.
The position of the driveshaft changes according to the car model and configurations of the car front-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, and front-engine rear-drive. Many other vehicles such as boats, locomotives, motorcycles, trucks, and vans also have prop shafts.
These shafts have a different number of prismatic joints, leaf joints, universal joints, or jaw couplings to enable change in distance and alignment between drive and driving parts.
The driveshaft has the following major parts:
Flanges
Slip yoke and Tube yoke
End yoke
Midship shaft
Universal joint
Center bearing
Tube
Types of Drive Shafts:
Single Piece shaft
Two or Three Piece shaft
Front Wheel Drive
Advantages of Drive Shaft
There are no or very low power losses.
These shafts have high durability.
The drive shaft doesn’t have complex construction.
It generates very low noise at high torque.
They need less maintenance compared to the chain system.
The Drive system doesn’t jam easily.