Contact surfaces for sliding electrical contacts

Surface structure plays a fundamental role for understanding the performance of sliding contacts. In this study surface structures were analyzed by confocal microscopy with special emphasis to anisotropic structure components. Such components can exist as part of the original surface structure and/or arise during sliding. For this purpose FFT analysis and autocorrelation analysis is being used for surface structure characterization. In addition, an anisotropy factor is introduced that quantitatively describes the anisotropic structure component. It could be shown that the anisotropy factor can be linked to the microscopic surface type as well as the electrical noise in a model sliding system.