Materials Technologies Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF192-054

Description

From operational viewpoint, once the warfighter is airborne, even one electrical contact disruption is too many at any time, especially during combat while executing a hazardous maneuver and must be prevented. In-flight environment is aggressive and hostile - High frequency vibrations, high use frequency on-off contacts, CTE mismatch at the contact interfaces, erosive fluid flow patterns, and moisture and corrosive fume ingress during thermal cycling. As a result, contact disruption and other wear-related outright failures persist in flight critical electrical interconnects when none can be tolerated. Air Force has identified three such failure modes: Opens (most frequent), shorts, and the most difficult of them all, the intermittent contact breaks pointing to worrisome issues related to the reliability and durability of electrical/signal transmission due to wear of and at the electrical contact surfaces. Together, these failures result from an active co-existence of the prevailing tribological and thermodynamic conditions. An innovative material combination is proposed for durable contact interface. Also, a novel architecture for coating design is intended to remove the wear dust and corrosion debris in order to reduce the rate of contact surface degradation and enhance connector reliability.