Simulation and Experimental Study on Temperature Rise Characteristic of a Piercing Connector

Piercing connectors are among the most used equipment in electric circuit. With the continuous development of the electricity industry, higher requirements for the reliability and heat resistance of the piercing connectors are needed. Aiming at the problems of poor current carrying capacity and heat dissipation status, a multifield coupling model of the piercing connector is created to analyze the structural stress and deformation distribution under the action of preload from the bolt and simulate the temperature distribution under different current intensities and surface roughness. Meanwhile, the measured experiments of contact resistance and highest temperature are performed to explore the relationship between contact resistance and the highest temperature. Results show that the maximum stress of the piercing connector is in the contact region between the piercing blade and the wire, which may be the origin of strength failure. The greater the current intensity and surface roughness, the more obvious the temperature rise. The effect of the different specification combinations of power wire and branch wire on contact resistance is small. Moreover, a critical installation torque exists in the influence range. The experimentally measured temperature verifies that the simulation has high precision. In this article, the numerically calculated and experimentally measured results provide a theoretical basis for optimizing the manufacturing and service performance of the piercing connectors.