Design and calibration of appropriate connector qualification/reliability tests

Summary form only given. Timely development of information on connector reliability requires development of calibrated, relevant laboratory tests. Development of such tests for connectors requires an understanding of the failure mechanisms active in a connector system. It is the goal of the test designer to think of all the things that might go wrong with the connector, and to design and calibrate appropriate tests to quantify their impact on the connector. Clearly, this problem is so complex that this goal is rarely achieved, and any practical test program will always include some arbitrariness. The author presents what is known about a number of failure mechanisms and discusses how to develop a rational test program to evaluate connector performance.<>