Abstract: Birfield universal joint has the advantages of constant speed transmission and stable additional bending moment. Considering the influence of intermediate support vibration on the transmission shaft power performance and vehicle interior noise, the design scheme of replacing the mid-cross universal joint with Birfield universal joint is proposed. The ADAMS virtual prototype is used to simulate the three-cross-shaft universal joint drive shaft and Birfield universal joint drive shaft under different input speed and different angle between the spindle shafts. The analysis shows that the vibration acceleration and torque fluctuation of the intermediate support of Birfield universal joint drive shaft tend to be more stable. Comparison and analysis of vehicle interior noise experiments are carried out on cars with the two kinds of transmission shaft. The results show that Birfield universal joint can effectively improve vehicle interior noise, which is about 5dB lower than that of the cross shaft universal joint transmission shaft in the middle and low speed areas, and improves the NVH performance of the vehicle.

Key words: Birfield universal joint, cross shaft universal joint, intermediate support, NVH