Effect of Temperature Cycling on Stress Relaxation Behavior of Electrical Connector Contacts

Abstract

This paper mainly studies the effect of temperature cycling on stress relaxation behavior of contacts for electrical connectors. Based on the analysis of the test specifications of electrical connectors, this paper provides a kind of test method on stress relaxation behavior of electrical connector contacts under temperature cycling conditions. The detecting circuit is designed; the test is carried out and finally, according to the test data, it can be concluded that 1) for the same temperature change, the absolute change of strain within the temperatures above zero is bigger than that within the subzero temperatures; 2) the deformation of contacts gradually increases as the number of cycles increases. The length of the degradation process for electrical connectors might be related with the high temperature value, temperature variation or temperature variation rate.