Laboratory Tester for Relay Contacts Lifespan

This study focuses on the implementation of a laboratory relay contact life tester using a data acquisition board and the NI LabVIEW development environment. Tested reed contacts have a lifespan of several million cycles. Therefore the biggest challenge was creating a tester that would be able to verify the ability of the contact to achieve a defined number of cycles at the required current load in a maximum of a few days. This study describes all the interesting discoveries that came up during the implementation of the tester. It also highlights the influence of coil current and switching frequency on contact settling time and lifespan. Copyright (c) 2024 The Authors.