Contacting Stability of Sliding Electrical Contacts

Abstract

It is stated that the operation of the sliding contact unit is accompanied by vibrations of the brushes that occur as a result of internal and external mechanical influences. The resulting violations of the sliding contact (SC) and the instability of contacting lead to a deterioration in the quality of current transmission, increased sparking, accelerated wear of the SC. The article is devoted to the derivation and verification of universal formulas for calculating the relative instability factor (RIF) of the SC. Derived formulas allow calculating the RIF of any SC compounds. Mathematical expressions are obtained to determine the distributions of instability in the tangential and axial directions of the transition layer of the SC. An experimental stand for studying the instability of various SC compounds at idle and in the rated load mode is described. The contacting cycle, which establishes a correspondence between the instantaneous value of the length of the measuring platform and the movement of the collector is described. Expressions for determining the equivalent length of the measuring area for different cases of placing the measuring brush relative to the zone of the main sliding contact are derived. These formulas allow us to find the RIF of various SC regions on experimental data based.