Simulation of Rough Electrodes Coupled with Structural Dynamics

Electrical chatter, defined here as a sharp increase in electrical contact resistance (ECR), is generally caused by a reduction in normal force between two conductive surfaces such that the real contact area is small enough to restrict the flow of electrical current. In harsh vibrational environments, chatter becomes detrimental to the capacity of a connector to transfer current, exceeding the ECR tolerances found in high-performance systems. Therefore, a computationally efficient dynamic simulation of both the structural vibrations and the micro-scale interactions of electrical connectors must be developed to understand the root cause of electrical chatter in various connector designs. In this paper, a reduced-order model of a spring, mass, and damper system coupled with surface asperity interactions is presented as an example case consisting of an idealized pin and receptacle electrical connector. This differs from other electrical chatter simulation methodologies, which either utilize computationally expensive finite element analysis or various linear assumptions regarding contact.