Hello, Hillel.

As far as I understand, there is more than gold thickness to consider.
You also have to care about the fork curvature, surface smoothness,
contact pressure and probably more factors. We have had some troubles
with a connector or two during the years. I remember well that increased
gold thickness did not help at all, the contacts carved deep "trenches"
down to the nickel after a few matings. The reason was, in one of the
cases, that the fork punching left a microsopic ridge, which acted like
a knife. In another case, the gold hardness of the two parts did not
match each other. Not to talk about the porosity. Concerning the rest of
your question you may talk with a guy hear, Christer Marklund, who has
investigated and calculated such cases many a times. I send a cc to him.
/Best regards /Ingemar H /Ericsson Microwave Systems/Sweden