Fretting corrosion

Fretting corrosion of connectors is a common problem of electronic devices when the connectors carry only small currents and only small voltages of a few volts are applied. The downstream controls interpret an increase in resistance as system failure what leads to failure of the device. Common contact resistances of plug connections are a few tens of milliohms. In some control systems, increases in resistance to a few 100 milliohms are considered a disturbance, in other systems it's a surge into the ohm range. In the case of failed systems, RIO GmbH analyzes whether the affected plug contacts are due to fretting corrosion effects. For this purpose, light and electron microscopic analyzes of the friction crater formation as well as an analysis of the elementary chemical
composition of the friction craters are performed (SEM/EDX).