Conduction degradation by fretting corrosion phenomena for contact samples made of high-copper alloys

The main cause of electrical contact resistance degradation by corrosion is the vibration of contact interfaces. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the change of contact resistance by means of a vibration test for uncoated sphere/plane contact made of new high-copper alloys.The influence of electrical and mechanical properties of materials, and mainly hardness, on contact resistance has been studied in this work. During the fretting test, a contact point was submitted to 16,000 vibration cycles under fretting amplitude of 50 μm and 1 Hz frequency. The sphere part was fixed, while the plane part was submitted to relative motion. At the end of the test, the fretted surfaces and the wear debris were analyzed by scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy to evaluate damage, oxidation and elemental composition present in the wear surfaces. In addition, the measurement of the wear track profile using a 3D surface scanning system was introduced. Increases in contact resistance and contact temperature were examined during the fretting test.The results showed that the contact resistance for the harder alloy was higher than that obtained for the other materials. In addition, topographic measurements showed that the small wear track corresponds to the harder material.