Paper Title
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF MAIN SHAFT WITH THREE DIFFERENT MATERIALS FOR OAT FLAKE ROLLING MACHINE

Abstract
This paper examines the structural integrity and performance of the main shaft in an oat flake rolling machine by conducting a comparative analysis of three different materials. The oat flaking machine operates by compressing oat grains between two horizontally aligned rollers, which rotate at 400 rpm with a gap of 0.45 mm. The rollers are driven by spur gears connected to an electric motor through a belt transmission system. The main shaft is a critical component that transmits the rotational power necessary for the rollers to process oats into flakes. Failure of the shaft occurs due to combined tensile, shear, bending, and torsional stresses, making material selection crucial for reliability and performance. In this study, the structural behavior of three different materials—Aluminium Alloy (7075-T6), Grey Cast Iron (ASTM 25), and Magnesium Alloy (HK31XA-0)—is evaluated using both theoretical calculations and numerical simulations through ANSYS Workbench. The shaft model is designed in SolidWorks and imported into ANSYS for structural analysis. von-Mises stress and effective strain are calculated for each material under typical operating conditions. Results show that Grey Cast Iron provides an optimal balance between stress resistance, mechanical durability, and cost, making it the most suitable material for the main shaft in this application. Keywords - Main Shaft, Structural Analysis, Finite Element Analysis, Grey Cast Iron, Material Selection.