I worked at Meritor Automotive Heavy Vehicle Systems in Fletcher NC as an undergraduate Co-op student from Jan 1998 - August 1998.The Meritor location that I worked at produced drive axles and steering axles for large trucks.  I worked in the design group and did a feasibility study for the introduction of a 2.64:1 drive axle ratio for the RT 40-145 line of drive axles. This required doing stress analysis on some of the axle components using Pro/E and Pro/Mechanica. Then I would take the stress figures and do a fatigue analysis to predict the life expectancy of the components. This was necessary since the higher gear ratio would produce higher stress level in the axle components that were upstream of the ring gear.
RT 40-145 tandem drive axle for over the road trucks.
The following is a Pro/Mechanica FEA rendering of a drop clutch loaded Inter-axle-differential spider in the forward unit of an RT 40-145. I calculated loads and ran analyses for many of the 2.64:1 ratio drive axle components to ensure that they had suitable fatigue margin.

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© 2006 Ryan Moody.