Factors Influencing the Fretting Corrosion of Tin Plated Contacts

In recent years, there have been ever-increasing demands to miniaturize automotive connectors. However, because the contact force decreases as connectors are miniaturized further, fretting corrosion, which is a typical problem occurring with low-force electric contacts, is expected to become a more serious problem in the future. This time we developed a new experimental device capable of controlling the contact load, fretting amplitude, fretting frequency, contact part temperature and humidity. In this report, we used the design of experiments, and quantitatively evaluated the extent of the influence of the expected factor (in terms of load, amplitude, and plating thickness, etc.) on the fretting phenomenon, which occurs in the tin plating of the connector terminal. Moreover, based on SEM examination, we analyzed the surface and cross section of the contact parts when degradation occurs, and considered the mechanism of the degradation.