Aluminum trailer axle really reliable?

"Lightweight" is an important trend in the automotive industry, from passenger cars to commercial vehicles, and the design and improvement related to "lightweight" almost never stop. As a relatively light material, aluminum alloy is not only used to create all-aluminum trailers, but also can be applied to the construction of commercial vehicle accessories, aluminum alloy shaft is one of them.

This aluminum alloy shaft is not the front or rear axle of the vehicle, referring to the drive shaft of the vehicle. The drive shaft is generally composed of a shaft tube, a telescopic sleeve and a universal joint, which is an important part of the transmission of power in the vehicle transmission train. Together with the gearbox and the transaxle, the power of the engine is transmitted to the wheel to make the vehicle produce driving force.

To put it more commonly, the vehicle engine is generally front-facing, and it is more convenient to control the front two wheels, but often makes the vehicle top-heavy, and the driving force of the rear wheel is not enough, and the drive shaft can transmit the driving force of the engine to the rear wheel to achieve front-to-rear drive.

At present, the most widely used in commercial vehicles, there is no doubt that the steel drive shaft is durable and cheap, but the disadvantage is that the weight is too high, and the trend of lightweight runs counter to it, which will not only increase the weight of the vehicle, but also increase the difficulty of the engine, because it must drive the heavy drive shaft to drive the vehicle.

In this way, the transmission shaft material is changed to aluminum alloy, the advantages are very obvious:

1. Lighter weight. In the "careful" transportation market, the lighter the vehicle weight, the more goods can be loaded in compliance. According to the relevant research, the aluminum alloy drive shaft can reduce the weight of about 30%-50% than the steel shaft, if you can convert this part of the weight into goods, owners can install more goods within the regulatory limits.

2. Reduce fuel consumption. The aluminum alloy shaft itself is lighter, easier to be driven to rotate, reduce the moment of inertia, the response speed of power transmission is improved, the transmission efficiency is improved, and the fuel consumption is greatly reduced.

3, the drive shaft dynamic balance is higher. The better the dynamic balance of the drive shaft, the smaller the shaking amplitude of the car body and the higher the driving comfort. According to the relevant data, the dynamic balance accuracy of the aluminum alloy drive shaft can be improved by about 25%.

About the aluminum alloy drive shaft, in fact, a few years earlier in the off-road vehicle application, as we all know, off-road vehicle as a military vehicle, wheelbase, wide body, load capacity and off-road capacity is strong, its power mainly rely on the transmission of the drive shaft. Aluminum alloy drive shaft density is small, light weight, easy to form, can use the least support to drive the maximum speed, give full play to the driving force of the vehicle.

Nevertheless, we also need to objectively see the shortcomings of aluminum alloy shafts, especially when applied to commercial vehicles. Although the main alloying elements of the aluminum alloy shaft are magnesium and silicon, the weldability, corrosion resistance and ultimate tensile strength are better, but its toughness is worse than that of steel. In other words, although the aluminum alloy material is harder, it is relatively more brittle. In addition, the price of aluminum alloy shaft, compared with the traditional steel transmission shaft, I am afraid that the price of this new lightweight trailer axle will be relatively high.

Nowadays, aluminum alloy materials have been widely used in many blue brand light trucks, but they are still less used in medium or heavy commercial vehicles, although they have played a very great help in the field of lightweight, can they perfectly undertake transportation tasks, but also need sufficient market application data for support.

In addition, vehicle lightweight can not simply rely on individual parts, the need to systematically apply multiple lightweight means to be more meaningful. For medium and heavy transport vehicles, lightweight modification needs to be more careful, strength, toughness, load-bearing reliability is the most important. Just like DARO low flat trailer axle, specially tailored for low flat semi-trailer, axle beam, brake drum, brake pads, etc., have taken special thickening treatment, although the self-weight can not fully occupy the advantage, but in the anti-heavy load, anti-fatigue performance is better than ordinary trailer axle, can provide the owner with higher and more stable safety protection.