ABSTRACT
This chapter will deal with contamination of arcing contacts. The emphasis will be upon the effects of contact contamination as a result of arc interactions with contaminants and the contact material in contrast to contaminant and contact interactions from corrosion mechanisms discussed in Chaps. 2 and 3. This is a broad subject and with many potential combinations of contaminants, contact materials, and electrical loads, so only the more common problems that have been studied and published will be discussed. It should be kept in mind when reading about specific examples of arc-contamination interactions given in this chapter that the results may be quite different when other electrical and mechanical load conditions from those cited in the specific example are used.
