Abstract
Fretting wear is a common cause of failure of an electrical contact (EC). In this study, we analyzed in detail the failure of EC induced especially by sliding using the representative electrical terminals. Furthermore, combining the friction energy dissipation theory, we proposed a prediction model to evaluate the electrical connector endurance (ECE) based on the contact stress and geometrical changes during the wear process obtained from a numerical model. The study helps establish that the friction energy dissipation theory is a powerful tool to analyze a contact failure due to wear. The proposed model proves to be effective in predicting the ECE for all considered cases such as micro-slip amplitude, contact force, overturning angle, superficial layer thickness, and friction/wear coefficients.
Highlights
An electrical contact (EC) is a critical aspect of the electrical connections in both high-power and low-power applications
In order to demonstrate the rationality of the finite element method (FEM) model for the wear process of EC, an experimental data of the cylinder-on-flat wear [15] is adopted to verify the validity of its simulation using ANSYS and the modified version of Archard’s equation with the critical technologies to simulate both the fretting wear and the evolution of fretting variables with number of wear cycles
The electrical contact resistance (ECR) endurance life is affected by a few critical wear parameters such as wear volume, contact pressure, and final contact area as the failure of EC depends on its materials, structure design, and the vibration environment; those parameters are firstly analyzed by the FEM calculation using the wear model as follows
Summary
An electrical contact (EC) is a critical aspect of the electrical connections in both high-power (e.g. automotive electronics) and low-power (e.g. telephone connections) applications. A prediction model for the electrical contact endurance life with a modified power formulation is introduced to characterize the evolution of electrical contact resistance (ECR) as a function of fretting cycle, based on the research by Fouvry et al [18, 19]. The critical parameters such as wear volume, contact pressure during the wear process, and final contact area resulting from failure of EC are obtained. We determined the coefficients of the power function for prediction of ECR endurance in a global scenario with different design variables
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