Effect of coating plasticity parameters on the fretting wear behavior of electrical contacts

Fretting wear is one of the most common failure modes in the field of electrical contact, which directly determines the reliability and service-life of products. The coating plasticity parameters are critical metric to rank fretting wear endurance, but they could not be directly captured from mechanical measurement and have not yet been applied to the assessment of fretting life. In this work, the coating plasticity parameters are calculated with help of dimensional theory by combining nanoindentation experiment and finite element simulation . The damage modes and failure mechanisms of the coatings under fretting wear process is systematically investigated by the evolution of plastic parameters. The results demonstrate that increasing the yield strength of the coatings from 374 MPa to 723 MPa, enhances the fretting wear endurance, resulting in an increase of approximately 3 times of the fretting life. This finding would be interesting for guiding the development of advanced coating in the field of electrical contact.