THE INFLUENCE OF DUST PARTICLES ON ELECTRICAL CONTACTS: THE EFFECTS OF CONTACT FORCE

摘要

The influence of dust particles on contact failures is an important factor and one of the difficult problems in contact phenomena. Williamson and his coworkers (1956) obtained good agreement between the experimental and theoretical values by his adroit use of analogy experiment and statistical theory. We have obtained the relationship between the probability of failure occurrence and the contact force of the contacts with our newly designed experimental device. The parameters changed in the experiments are the size and density of the scattering dust particles and the radius of curvature of the contacts which have a dome-end. In order to discuss the effect of contact force on the contact failure rates, we have attempted to combine the elastic contact theory with the theory which was derived by Williamson using the "region of influence".