Investigation on Intermittent Failure Phenomenon of Electrical Connectors under Repetitive Mechanical Insertion and Withdrawal Operations

Electrical connectors play an indispensable role in electrical and electronic systems. The frequently occurred intermittent failure events seriously affect the reliability of application systems. In this article, the repetitive mechanical insertion and withdrawal experiment of electrical connector is carried out by using our designed test rig and the intermittent failure phenomena recurs. The typical waveforms of contact resistance and force during the mating operation are presented. The variation laws of static contact resistance and dynamic contact resistance under intermittent failure condition are counted and analyzed. And the dynamic contact resistance is proven to be a suitable sensitive parameter to characterize the intermittent failure event. Based on the mathematical model, variation of surface morphology, and element analysis, the failure mechanism of electrical connectors under repetitive operation is proposed.