Splined Shafts of the YPR Vehicle. A General Inquiry on the Material QualityAspects That Influence Fatigue Life

摘要

Various providers of drive shafts, for instance Norca and Napco, offer theirproducts to the Royal Netherlands Army. The steel drive shafts fail early as a result of metal fatigue. Perhaps the Norca product performs slightly better than the Napco. This report offers a summary of shaft features as they were tested or researched: chemical composition, hardness, toughness, microscopic structure. The report concludes that the differences in fatigue life are the result of a mix of these features. The existing shafts cannot be upgraded. There is no simple criterion to distinguish one shaft type from the other one.