Driveshafts are composed of a transmission side joint, wheel side joint, and shaft which connect the two joints. The Rzeppa type constant velocity joint (CVJ) is usually selected as the wheel side joint of a drive shaft for front wheel drive automobiles.
Due to recent needs of fuel efficiency and lighter weight for vehicles, it is necessary to reduce the joint size and improve the efficiency of a CVJ. In order to reduce the weight, solving tribology details for long life under high contact pressure is an important issue for developing a CVJ. It is difficult to understand the characteristics of a contact surface, such as relative slip velocity or spin behavior, because the outer race, inner race, cage, and balls, act complicatedly and exchange loads at many points.
Meanwhile, after joint endurance tests, ball spalling marks at pole of the ball are sometimes observed. Simulating ball rotational behavior and solving the formation mechanism of such phenomena could contribute to joint durability and joint efficiency improvement. In this paper, ball rotational behavior, is simulated using a multibody dynamics approach including stick slip friction force model that is more accurate than previous. This model enables simulation of ball angular velocity. Through multipoint measuring and graphical analysis, the experiment proves an error of 15% in the simulation result.