drive shaft angle with respect to horizontal

[ketan]

Why is drive shaft given angle with respect to horizontal in most of the cars?What are the specific advantages this have over a horizontal drive shaft?

How is that angle calculated?
Waiting for immediate replies!!

[ketan]

Why is drive shaft given angle with respect to horizontal in most of the cars?What are the specific advantages this have over a horizontal drive shaft?

How is that angle calculated?
Waiting for immediate replies!!

[Chris Allbee]

The measurement is with respect from the horizontal because it is just a convenient standard I suppose.

There is no direct benefit to running driveshafts not horizontal, I suspect many cars end up in that configuration because of packaging issues.

[Boston]

There are three issues you need to compromise with:

-Greater frictional losses in the CV with greater halfshaft angles (you will need to determine if they are significant)
-Lower CG if you can put the differential below the wheel axis (which results in a greater halfshaft angle)
-Packaging

[denn]

While running the diff below the wheels can help move the CG down low, it inflicts a ceratin degree of complexity to half shaft length calulations. When the differential shares a common axis with the wheels the shafts are at their longest functional length at ride height, and length calculation is relatively simple as bump/jounce telescope the shafts out of the CV's and effectively shortening them with relation to the CV's. If this axis is not common, some special consideration must be applied to avoid half shafts pulling out of/bottoming into CV's under maximum articulations.