Characterizing Global Temperature and Humidity

Environmental Severity with Relation to

Published Standards
Dustin S. Aldridge

Abstract— Severe yet common product environmental tests are 1000 hours at 85°C/85%RH or 95°C/95%RH for products, circuit
card assemblies and electronic components. Such environments never occur naturally, however they attempt to simulate the
corrosion damage that could be expected in service. To what natural environment do these tests correlate? Further, how do tests
based upon Mil-Hdbk-310, Mil-Std-810 and STANAG 2895 B3 daily environments compare to these standard test environments?
The analysis employs the physics-of-failure Peck power law temperature-humidity model with common conservative values for the
Arrhenius activation energy and the relative humidity exponent, based on aluminum corrosion, coupled with climatological data
from 49 United States weather stations and 19 international locations. The monthly average temperature and humidity extremes
were transformed into an hourly diurnal cycle assumed to occur every day of each month. Using the power law model the
equivalent time at the test condition was calculated for each day, and summed for each month and location. The 85°C/85%RH test
can be correlated with about 10 years in a hot and moist natural environment, such as Singapore, with 1000 hours of 95°C/95%RH
exposure equivalent to 25 years. Long term tests based upon the worst case diurnal temperature and humidity cycles in military
standards are on the order of 1 in 1,000,000 probability of occurrence in nature.

(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)