Mezo: A Reliable High Durability Connector for Signal Transmission

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.