The Reliability of Housing Locking Structure of Electric Connector for Automobile

Electric connectors for automobile have a housing locking structure to prevent the electric contacts from being disconnected by vibration. As the environment in the automobile becomes more severe, the connector housing tends to deteriorate more quickly. However, we must make sure the locking structure does not break when disconnecting the connector for maintenance.

We estimated the lifetime of the locking structure, focusing on heat deterioration properties by using CAE and Miner's rule. In addition, we determined the design standards and the accelerated test conditions to guarantee market reliability.