Making contacts

Engineers at AMI DODUCO reveal their latest research and developments on critical automotive electrical contact reliability.

Warranty cost, long a concern in automotive electrical systems, range from a $200 electronic control module failure to a simple $0.05 connector intermittence that frequently results in “no fault found” diagnostics. Nonetheless, problems such as these still result in the same degree of customer dissatisfaction and add to warranty repair cost.

While many would regard a simple connector, switch, or relay as low-tech and unglamorous, there are many research projects going on at automotive companies, suppliers, and universities to study their failure modes and develop long-term solutions. Disciplines involving electrical engineering, physics, chemistry, and material science are required to study electrical-contact problems. Increasing demands for lower-cost solutions, longer life, smaller designs, higher voltages, and more environmentally friendly methods and materials are pressuring developers for better innovations.