Effect Of Vibration On Reliability Of Vehicle Connector

During storage and using, vibratory stress is one of the main factors that affect the reliability of connector. However, the vibration environment is unavoidable when vehicle is working, and the vibration is encouraged from the road surface and engine. So the connectors using on vehicle require higher reliability under vibration. This paper focuses on reliability of connector under vibration by studying the vibration-induced fretting phenomenon. First, use FEM software to simulate the fretting phenomenon. Second, design experiment to test and verify the vibration-induced fretting.During simulation, the first issue is to get the contact normal force by ANSYS, and then use LS-DYNA to simulate the relative motion between connector’s contact surfaces under vibration. In this paper, the simulations cover different frequencies in the same acceleration and different accelerations in the same frequency. The results show that:(1) the fretting is existent, and the frequency of fretting is the same as the frequency of vibration. And there is a sliding between contact surfaces at the beginning of vibration.(2) At the same acceleration, the amplitude of fretting firstly decreased and then increased slowly with frequency increase.(3) At the same frequency, the amplitude of fretting increased with acceleration. There is an acceleration threshold for shedding, when acceleration is close to the threshold the increase of fretting amplitude is quickening.After simulation, an experiment is carried out to verify the simulation result. Vibration exciter is used to produce vibration environment for connector. Since it is limited by the exciter’s parameter, the experiment can only select one set from the simulations. The connector’s contact surfaces are observing by optical microscope after experiment, and the wear track is obvious. The wear can prove the fretting under vibration strongly.