A Study on Vibration-Induced Fretting Degradation in Connector Systems

Vibration-induced fretting degradation is widely known as a major problem for electrical connectors. At present, much of the evaluation of fretting propensity for particular connector designs and the influence of variations in those designs on fretting performance is conducted through exhaustive experimental testing. Therefore, a simulation based method to predict the influence of various design factors would be beneficial to those responsible for connector design and application. In the authors’ previous work, a combined experimental and modeling study of vibration-induced fretting degradation was conducted for a single blade/receptacle connector pair. However, in actual application, multiple pin connector system are typically used. Thus, studying a complete connector system is an appropriate next step in investigating the relative influence of connector system characteristics on fretting degradation. In this study, a simplified 2-D model was developed using ABAQUS. A series of parallel simulation and corresponding experiments were performance. Good correlation between the experimentally observed results and those predicted by the models was observed.© 2009 ASME