THE VIBRATION OF CONTACTS OF AN ELECTROMAGNETIC RELAY

Z. Malec

Abstract

The article deals the vibration of contacts of electro-mechanical relays (and mechanical contacts generally), its properties, its measurement and a special measuring instrument built for this purpose.<BR />The vibration of contacts is caused by ringing of the springs (and other mechanical components) carrying the contacts. It generates quasiperiodic interruptions of current flowing through a moving contact-pair. These interruptions cause problems e.g. when this current controls fast semiconductor circuits or when the contact-pair is loaded by a remarkable current and sparks and burning of contacts comes in. To avoid these problems some linear or nonlinear filters must be introduced. The measurement of this phenomena has shown that the vibrations mentioned here affect remarkably the time parameters (different delays) describing the behavior of the relay and that these parameters become to be random. The statistical characteristics of these parameters contain information about the technical (diagnostic) state of the relay, which is important for estimation of the behavior of the relay in future. Finally, the basic data of the measuring instrument are introduced.

Keywords

electro-mechanical relay, vibration of contacts, burning of contacts, diagnostic state

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IMEKO-WC-2000-TC7-P191.pdf

DOI

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IMEKO TC

TC7 - Measurement Science

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