Probabilistic evaluation approach for electrical connector mating: An empirical study on automotive electronic connectors

Half engagement is a state that metal terminals are mated, but mechanical housings are not mated completely. When a connector is in such state, the possibility of connector separation is high even for a small external disturbance. It may cause a serious malfunctioning to the parent product. During manufacturing, however, it is difficult to detect the state because electrical functions still work properly. Lack of feeling of mating is known as the primary cause of the state. Normally the feeling of mating is unmeasurable. Therefore, it is necessary to quantify the feeling of mating to prevent the half engagement. To this end, in this paper, we have proposed a new evaluation approach for the half engagement prevention. We have adopted a probabilistic structure based on reliability theory and applied the logistic regression method as a scoring tool. Moreover, we have introduced two new evaluation factors to increase the accuracy of state detection. We have verified and compared the performance of our proposed approach to that of the conventional approach which has a deterministic structure. Throughout extensive experiments and analyses with real automotive electronic connectors, we have confirmed that the proposed approach is superior to the existing one in terms of the accuracy of state detection.