Connectors-metallurgy meets modeling

The creation process for a connector, in particular the contact portion of the system, historically has involved mechanically inclined engineers and experienced stampers in moving from the design stage to prototyping and, finally, production. This tends to be an iterative process, particularly early in the design cycle where size limits and performance requirements must undergo compromise. With the advent of high speed work stations some of the early design steps have been accelerated or eliminated. A generation of finite element modeling (FEM) engineers has emerged. However, a knowledge “gap” exists between known materials behavior and its integration into the FEA “calculator”. The purpose of this paper is to help designers recognize the implications of certain metallurgical phenomena in their models and to suggest ways to adjust the models so that more representative behavior is exhibited by the model. The benefit is to further reduce the time-to-market for new products by having improved models that more accurately predict the behavior of finished production components