Numerical Analysis on the Electrical Performance of Microstructured Environmentally-Friendly Electrical Contact Material Ag/SnO2

Abstract

The paper analyzes the influence of structural parameters on the electrical performance of the microstructured environmentally-friendly electrical contact material Ag/SnO2 by using numerical simulation method.The numerical results show that the reisitivity of fiber-like electrical contact material Ag/SnO2 is significantly reduced compared with the resistivity of Ag/SnO2 adding reinforcing nanoparticles in the traditional way.So the fiber-like electrical contact material Ag/SnO2 exhibits higher conductivity in macro. On further analysis, we learn that the resistivity of fibrous electrical contact materials is related to weight percent of reinforced phase, and micro-structural parameter of length to diameter ratio. The resistivity increases as weight percent of reinforced phase increases,and decreases non-linearly with micro-structural parameter of length to diameter ratio increasing.This demonstrates that numerical simulation is one of effective methods for analysis of the electrical performance of the microstructured electrical contact material.