Investigation on the Thermal Failure Evaluation of Load-Sharing Connectors

摘要

The performance of connectors can be significantly affected by thermal effects. Multiple-contact structure allows connectors to work under the load-sharing mode to improve reliability. But affected by various factors, paralleled contact units might unevenly degrade to cause the uneven distribution of load. It makes thermal failure evaluation more complicated compared with the cases where only the single-contact structure needs to be considered. Here, the thermal failure evaluation of a typical Ioad-sharing connector was investigated. Firstly, the temperature distribution of the connector was analyzed under various conditions and a two-parameter indicator to evaluate the thermal failure was proposed. Then, a finite element analysis model of the connector was built up and validated to quantify the failure threshold which is the critical values of the evaluation indicator. Furthermore, the corrosion of the connector was analyzed and verified by accelerated tests, which is a typical mechanism to cause the uneven degradation. Finally the degradation process was analyzed, and modeled by adopting the evaluation indicator. Based on that a reliability model was deduced combined with the failure threshold. The evaluation method here can be applied in more cases where the paralleled contact units unevenly degrade.