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Joint Resistance of Bolted Copper BusBar Connections as influenced by

Mechanical Contact Devices Material and Configuration

Conference Paper · January 2009

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 13th Middle East Power Systems Conference, MEPCON' 2009, Assiut University, Egypt, December 20­23, 2009
Joint Resistance of Bolted Copper Bus­Bar
Connections as influenced by Mechanical
Contact Devices Material and
Configuration.
Ghareeb Moustafa Steffen Grossmann Mazen Abdel­Salam
TU Dresden – Germany Assiut University­ Egypt
ghareebmoustafa@ grossmann@ mazen2000as@
yahoo.com ieeh.et.tu­dresden.de yahoo.com
Abstract­ The effect of different Mechanical contact devices on
the DC Joint resistance of overlapping bolted connection was
investigated experimentally, A thermal network calculations are
done and the result power and temperature are compared with
that obtained experimentally the agreement between measured
and calculated values are quite good. Furthermore, the behavior
of the joint resistance of bolted copper joint when loaded by AC
current was measured with changing mechanical contact devices
shape and material, It was found that use of steel plate
significantly increase the AC contact resistance especially if the
direction of the plate is normal to current direction. In addition,
the temperature rise and power dissipated through the joint with
different mechanical contact device was measured.
I. INTRODUCTION
The main function of the sub­station is to provide a point in
the electrical system where energy can be tapped from the
transmission lines, transformed to lower voltage and directed
via busses to switches and circuit breakers for the purpose of
either protecting the various circuits in emergencies, or
switching circuits according to load, need for maintenance,
etc. Furthermore, of the many types of connections used in
sub­stations components, overlapping bolted joints are the
most widely used. They are versatile, dependable, and
economical.
There are several factors influencing the performance of an
electrical contact. Such important factors are: design,
environmental conditions, mechanical and electrical loads,
materials and assembling procedures. As the performance
demands on electrical networks and plants in general, and
electrical contacts in particular, constantly increases, the need
for more reliable rules for design and testing of electrical
contacts becomes necessary. As for the design factor, a
number of more or less important design parameters can be
identified, including: contact force, specific contact pressure
(i.e. pressure distribution on the contact surface) , contact
surface topography (preparation), etc (1).
300
S. S. Dessouky Samir M. El­Makkawy
Suez Canal University­ Egypt
ssdesouky@ makkawy_06@
hotmail.com
yahoo.com
A well­designed contact device should have an adequate
mechanical strength to maintain the mechanical integrity of a
connector under normal and overload conditions of conductor
operation. It should also establish and maintain a low contact
resistance, thus preventing or minimizing the excessive
heating of the joint under overload conditions. In fact, the
temperature rise of the joint should not exceed that of the
conductor under normal or emergency conditions (2).
The simplest type of connection is made using a hand tool
and a mechanical connector, most of which use mechanical­
contact devices such as washers, bolts, screws, etc. These
connectors are inexpensive and easily installed but give rise to
doubts about their reliability, primarily because of their
performance under operating conditions.
It is well established that the electrical contact resistance of
clean contacts, depends on such parameters as: normal force,
contact microhardness, electrical resistivity and surface
texture (roughness) Traditionally, surface texture parameters
are defined by the variance of the height and the slope of the
surface (3). The most significant quantity to assess is the
joint resistance to guarantee reliable operation of the joint.
The joint resistance should be no greater than limiting value.
Such limiting values do not exist at present. Furthermore, it is
known that the life time of an electrical joint will be
determined significantly by the joint resistance R0 after
assembly (before aging) (4). The quickness of ageing depends
on the performance factor k which equal the joint resistance
divided by the resistance of an unjointed bar of the same
length, it has proven that maximum initial performance factor
must be equal or less than 1.5 to have a life time 25…30 year
for bolted joint (5) (6).
Previous studies on the effectiveness of different
mechanical contact devices (2) have shown that the use of
disc­spring (Belleville) washers combined with thick flat 3. Solvent cleaned to remove grease and abrade the
washers assures the most satisfactory mechanical stability of a surface with a steel wire brush.
bolted joint under stress­relaxation and current­cycling
conditions. The same combination was also found to be the
most effective in reducing the deleterious effects of
thermoelastic ratcheting on the mechanical integrity of bolted
aluminum­to­aluminum connections (7). Recently the effect
of Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) Belleville Washer on the
contact resistance was studied (8).

Distributions of temperature in electro­technical devices and

plant as well as thermal transfer between the parts of device Figure (1­a) plate and twin nut direction perpendicular to current direction
and from device to the environment can be calculated by assembly number 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8 table (1).
means of thermal networks (9) (10).

This paper is discussing whether special type of mechanical

contact device has any influence on a contact resistance of a
bolted joint copper busbar. At the same time, a comparative
study between the different type of the joint cleaning and its
effect on contact resistance during tightening and releasing
was made. Moreover, the power dissipated through the joints
with different mechanical contact devices is measured.
Figure (1­b) plate and twin nut direction parallel to current direction
The experiments were carried out in Institute of Electrical assembly number 9 table (1).
Power Systems and High Voltage Engineering of the Dresden
Figure 1: copper busbar and test object assembly.
University of Technology ­Germany
. stainless steel
Plate Plate steel S52
II. EXPERIMENTAL DETALS
A. Copper Busbars
All the tests in this study were performed using copper busbars from SE­
CuF25 ( Figure 1) measuring 80 mm by 10 mm by 180 mm long, delivered
from SIEMENS to TUD Dresden –Germany; the two busbares are connected
by four bolt arranged in rectangular shape in an overlap distance of 90 mm
Figure 1 .

B. Figure 2) Single nut

1.Stainless steel Plate, KLT­Plate 76X38x2,5; Washer
X5CrNi18­10
2. Normal steel Plate, 76X38x2,5
3.Washer: A12, A2­70, ISO 7019
4.Single nut: Hexagonal ,A2­70, ISO 4017
5.Stainless steel Twin Nut, M12/62x25x14;
X5CrNi18­10
6.Normal steel Twin Nut , M12/62x25x14
7.Screw: M12x55 Hex, A2­70, ISO 4017
8.Screw: M12x55 Hex, Normal steel , ISO 4017
The contact surfaces of the connectors intended for the
contact resistance measurements were cleaned used three Twin nut stainless steel Twin nut steel S52
different methods for cleaning before measuring the joint
resistance with increasing and decreasing torque
1.Solvent cleaned by alcohol. Figure 2: Photograph for the Mechanical Contact Device.
2.Solvent cleaned and polished the surface by fleece
sheet.

301
 C. DC Joint resistance measurement Table 1: test number, D.C and first ac Joint resistance reading.
The DC contact resistance was measured by a micro­
ohmmeter MO2­ 50 (manufacturer: Rasmus, Germany).
D. AC Joint Resistance Measurement
The joint was connected as shown in Figure 3, for different
joint assemblies in Table 1 operating under the same
environmental and loading condition of 50 Nm. The applied
current was 2300 A to 2350 A. The temperature of the
busbars was measured by ALMEMO 2590 (manufacturer:
AHLBORN), until it reaches the steady state temperature.
Moreover, the joints resistance and power dissipated were
also measured by a Single­Phase Precision Power Analyzer
LMG95 (manufacturer: HOTEK TECHNOLOGY) to
eliminate the effect of magnetic field ­ produce by high
current­ on the measuring value, Measuring terminal of
power analyzer must be crossed as shown in Figure 3. Before
connected the circuit, all contacting surfaces of the copper
busbars were prepared following the same procedure.
III. RESULTS
Figure 4 shows a comparison between DC joints resistance
and Initial AC Joint resistance at the same contact force. It
can be seen that the initial AC contact resistance of the
copper joint with Plate and twin nut from normal steel is
higher than the AC value for other connection assemblies.

Figure 4: comparison between DC joint resistance and initial AC joint

resistance.

B. Effect of alternating current on the joint resistance

Figure 3: Circuit diagram for AC test circuit.
Table 1 : test number, D.C and first ac Joint resistance reading.
A. Relation between joint resistance and joint force
Effect of increasing and decreasing torque on the joint
resistance is assessed as shown in Figure (5) where the
cleaning method was changed as explained previously. This
figure shows that at the same joint force the joint resistance is
always higher during tightening than during releasing this
behavior is known as hysteresis of the joint resistance. Also it
is clear from Figure 5 that the Joint resistance does not
depend on joint torque at torque greater than 20 Nm for
polished and abraded joint.
Figure 6 shows the relation between joint resistance and joint
temperature for all tests. It is clear from the figure that using
normal steel plate has a great effect on joint resistance
especially when used with normal steel nut, this can be
ascribed to the eddy current produced on normal steel plate
when subjected to AC current. This cause increasing in joint
resistance and increasing in power dissipated as shown in
Figure 7 . If we compare the result obtained from assembly 3,
4 and 5, 6 and 7, 8 we can observe that changing screw
material has no effect in AC or DC joint resistance.
If the direction of the steel plate was changed (assembly
number 9 figure (1­b)) to be in the same direction of the
passed current the joint resistance and power dissipated will
decreased when compared with that when the plate direction
is perpendicular to the current direction.
C. Power Dissipated through the joint
The power dissipated through the special (normal steel) and
normal copper joints was measured by Power analyzer.
Experiment was carried out two times the first one is to
measure the power dissipated at 20oC ( Figure 8 ) and the
second one is to measure the power dissipated when current
flows for about 2 hours ( Figure 10). From this figure, it can
be seen that the power dissipated and the temperature rise

302
through the normal steel contact devices copper joint is higher
in comparison to the other type.

Figure 5: Relation between joint resistance and joint torque at assembly No.3.
Figure 8 : Power dissipation versus AC current for different joints

at T= 20 oC.

IV. THERMAL N ETWORK

Figure 6: Relation between joint resistance and temperature raise at different
Mechanical contact Devices
A. Simulation concept
The Thermal Network Method (TNM) is based on a
substitution of an arbitrary 3D geometry by a circuit
consisting of thermal resistances, capacitances and heat
sources. For such a network the currents correspond to heat
flow and the nodal potentials to temperatures. Due to
similarity of mathematical formulations the electrical circuit
programs can be used to obtain a solution. The basic
advantage of the thermal network analysis is the fast
computation time as steady state computations of large
models can be performed within a few seconds. Therefore, the
TNM is very suitable for parameter studies and become
popular as a tool supporting the industrial design (11) (12) .
The thermal network is modeled by an equivalent electrical
and thermal variables and calculation equations. Where are
reported in Table 2 Table 3 respectively.

Table 2: relation between electrical and thermal flow field

Electrical domain Thermal domain

Voltage V [V] Temperature T [°C]
Current I [A] Heat flow P [W]
Electrical Resistance R [Ω] Thermal resistance Rth [K/W]
Thermal
Electrical Capacitance C [F] Cth [J/K]
Capacitance

By using the network simulation program PSPICE with the

corresponding thermal model libraries and calculation
equations Table 3 for thermal power losses and thermal
resistances for busbar the thermal networks were built Figure
9.

Figure 7: Power Dissipated vs. Temperature with different twin material

and shape.

303
Table 3: Calculation Equations For Thermal Power Losses And Thermal Resistances

Thermal Network Equation

Element

Power Losses

Convection resistance

Figure (10­a)

Radiation resistance
Losses

Conducting along Figure (10­b)

Radiation

Convectio

conductor
Figure 10: power dissipated versus AC current for different joints after being
heated.

I. CONCLUSIONS
1. Results of contact resistance measurements with
changing applied torque show clearly that the joint
resistance of bolted copper power connectors can be
significantly decreased by surface preparation, such
as abraded or polished.
2. From the available data and the experimental tests,
the DC joint resistance of cleaning copper bas­bar
Figure 9: Thermal Network model of busbar conductor
joint is not affected by changing mechanical contact
B. Thermal network results devices or increasing applied torque.
The thermal network results of power and temperature at 3. The Joint resistance of busbar joints is affected by
different applied currents are shown in Figure 10. The figure mechanical contact devices material when subjected
shows a good agreement of the calculated values with those to AC current.
measured experimentally. The different between measured 4. The detrimental effect of normal steel devices
and computed value for temperature may be attributed to resulting in the form of high AC joint resistance and
instrument error or the constant room temperature 20 oC in high power dissipated.
the calculation procedure. 5. Changing screw material (stainless steel – normal
steel) does not effect on DC or AC joint resistance.

304
 6. The joint resistance of bolted copper busbar with Contacts and the 22nd International Conference on Electrical
normal steel contact devices decreases when the Contacts,20­23 Sept. 2004, PP.111­ 117.
direction of used plate and twin nut was changed, 11. Christoph Gramsch, Andreas Blaszczyk, Helmut Löbl1
this ascribed to changing of the amount of magnetic and Steffen Grossmann. "Thermal Network Method in the
field which cutting plate and twin nut. Design of Electric Power Equipment". Scientific Computing
in Electrical Engineering SCEE 2006.
7. The agreement between the theoretical and 12. Ina Berg, Helmut LöbL, Steffen Grossmann and Frank
experimental result of temperature and power Golletz. "Thermal Behavior Of Network Components
dissipated at different joint assembly obtained from Depending On Outdoor Weather Conditions". 20th
this study is quite good. International Conference on Electricity Distribution,Prague,
8­11 June 2009.
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