An effective-resistance measurement technique for improving the current-cycling test of power connectors

The current-cycling tests as prescribed by the ANSI C119.4 and CSA-C57 standards have been in use for many years by utilities in the US and Canada to evaluate the performance of electrical connectors. Although these standards can provide some satisfactory level of assurance for the users, their evaluation criteria are, however, not sensitive enough to detect the contact degradation. As a consequence, a great variety of commercially available connectors can conform to the acceptance criteria setup by these standards, but show problematic performance in the field applications. This paper presents a new effective-resistance measurement technique which significantly improves its sensitivity to the contact deterioration. Application of this technique in the current-cycling testing proved to be a valuable diagnostic tool in evaluating and rating the connector performance.