Correlation between wear and electrical behaviour of contact interfaces during fretting vibration

Ben Jemaa, Noureddine and Swingler, Jonathan , University of Rennes University of Southampton (2005) Correlation between wear and electrical behaviour of contact interfaces during fretting vibration. 23rd International Conference on Electrical Contacts, together with International Session on Electro-Mechanical Devices 2006, Sendai, Japan. 05 - 08 Jun 2006. pp. 215-219 .

Abstract

It is well known that vibration of contacts is the main cause of contact degradation by the so called fretting corrosion phenomena. In fact the oxidation process of particles generated by mechanical wear produce the increase of contact resistance frequently reported in the literature. The main objective of this work is to examine conjointly the wear amount and electrical behaviour of connector terminals under vibration stress. The spring lamellas of an automotive connector are submitted to high number of vibration (103 to 107 cycles) whereas the pin is firmly attached to a fixed support. High frequency (100Hz) and low frequency (1Hz) oscillation with two amplitudes of 50?m and 250 ?m are used. The contact is made with copper alloy and coated with 2?m of thickness and made in tin, silver or gold. The contact resistance is measured with a current source (Im = 1mA) with a voltage limit of Vcc of 20mV. Furthermore a new technique for characterising the subsequent wear is carried out. So, the dimensions of the resultant wear track are evaluated by profilometer (10 nm of resolution) while the removed mass in the track are evaluated by weight (±1?g). The main results show that a low level of wear observed during the earlier stage of fretting may corresponds to the neglected contact resistance increase. However after this initiating period the coating is removed and as contact resistance increased the wear takes place in the substrate. Finally the effects of motion parameters, test duration and different coatings were studied.

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