A Life Prediction Method for Electronic Equipment

under Combined Thermal Cycling and Vibration

Loading Conditions

Zhang Wei, Tao Junyong, Zhang Shufeng

Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Integrated Logistics Support
National University of Defense Technology
Changsha, China
zhangv08@gmail.com

Abstract—Most electronic equipment is subjected to thermal The previous research have been documented for product
cycling and random vibration in service or transportation, failures due to thermal cycling, limited research has been
especially in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics. For conducted modeling failures caused by combined thermal
electronic components withstand combined vibration and cycling and vibration.
thermal cycling load, one of the most possible failure modes is
fatigue failure of solder interconnects. The coupling of thermal
cycling and vibration will accelerate crack propagation, resulting
in premature failure of solder joints. In this paper, an advanced
approach is proposed to predict the electronic equipment life
cycle, based on the liner damage and physics of failure (PoF)
theories. Thermal cycling and vibration loading conditions are
co-considered in the analysis procedure. In order to verifying the
life prediction method and residual strength reliability model,
some simulation research has been done with the Monte-Carlo
method under thermal and random vibration cycling. Comparing
with traditional methods for electronic equipment life prediction,
which is only appropriate for a single point failure with only one
failure mechanism model, the proposed method gives more
comprehensive and accurate prediction of the electronic Figure 1. The Stress Combined Thermal Cycling and Random
equipment life cycle. Vibration Loading

Keywords-Physics of Failure, Thermal Fatigue, Vibration

Fatigue, Life Prediction, Residual Strength Reliability

I. INTRODUCTION
Most electronic equipment is subjected to thermal cycling and
random vibration during their service or transportation,
especially in the field of aeronautics and astronautics. For
electronic components withstand combined vibration and
thermal cycling load, one of the most possible failure modes is
fatigue failure of solder interconnects. The coupling of thermal
stress and vibration stress will accelerate crack propagation,
resulting in premature failure of solder joints substantially.
Figure 1 shows the stress diagram which combined thermal
cycling and random vibration loading in solder equipment. Figure 2. Pie Chart of Failure Reason of Electronic Equipment
According to American Air Force statistical analysis on
electronic equipment, temperature caused electronic Barker, et al. [1], [2], proposed a linear superposition
equipment failure counts for 40% of the total failure, 27% of approach to consider the effect of combined loading on solder
the failure is caused by vibration and shock, as shown in joint reliability. The damage due to vibration and thermal loads
Figure 2. was calculated individually and superposed in a linear fashion
with consideration of different load frequencies. This approach

978-1-4799-7958-5/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 11

assumed that interaction effects and event sequences could be
neglected. However, there were no experimental validations of
the approach in their work.
Upadhyayula and Dasgupta [3] proposed an incremental
damage superposition approach (IDSA) with consideration of
temperature and mean stress effects for leaded packages. Test
results showed that combined loading causes less damage than
pure vibration loading at room temperature. The effect of
thermo mechanical mean stresses was assumed to reduce
damage in vibration induced fatigue failures.
Qi et al. [4] investigated both a linear damage superposition
approach (LDSA) and an incremental damage superposition
approach (IDSA) on solder joint combined loading reliability
with experiment tests. The basic assumption (LDSA) to model
the complex concurrent loading condition is to separate
concurrent temperature plus vibration loading into quasi-static
temperature step intervals.
In this paper, an advanced approach is proposed to predict
the electronic equipment life cycle, based on the liner damage
and physics of failure (PoF) theories. Thermal cycling and
vibration loading conditions are co-considered in the analysis
procedure, research approach as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Life Prediction Method of Combining Thermal
Cycling and Vibration Loads
II. MODELING
A. Model of Thermal Fatigue Life under Thermal Cycling
Within thermal cycling process, since the most electronic
interconnection parts like solder joints in electronic
components, plated-through-hole (PTH), they all have different
thermal expansion coefficient which will cause internal stress.
Under dramatic temperature evolving surrounding, crack may
happens and extended. This will also cause arise of resistance,
even short circuit, ultimately the failure of whole electronic
system. In all kind of solder joints and PTH evaluable thermal
fatigue life model, most popular model is the elastic strain
based one which introduced by Coffin-Manson, Soloman and
Engelmaier. This fatigue model described empirical relations
between life of cycling and elastic strain evolving of solider
joints. Furthermore, the related Plastic shear strain can be
12
calculated with helping of experiment, data analysis and
simulation.
With using of Coffin-Manson equation, the fatigue life of
solider joint can be predicted, there into, the level of elastic
strain will decide the fatigue life of solider joint. In the
meantime, after Engelmaier also take the influence of cycling
frequency and average temperature for solider joint fatigue life
into account, the following fatigue model has been arisen as:
1/ c
1 ⎛ Δγ ⎞ (1)
Nf = ⎜ ' ⎟⎟
2 ⎜⎝ 2ε f ⎠
Where: Nf is average life of thermal fatigue failure; Δγ is
share strain; Δε is total strain range; ε 'f =0.325 is Fatigue
ductility coefficient; c is fatigue ductility exponent.
Where:
LD (2)
Δ γ =F ΔαΔTe
h
c = −0.442 − 6 × 10 −4 Tm + 1.74 × 10 −2 ln(1 + f th ) (3)
1 (4)
Tm = (Tmax + Tmin )
2
Tm is thermal cycling average temperature; fth is the thermal
cycling frequency; h is height of solider joint; F is Empirical
correction factor; LD is the length of structure. ∆α is linear
thermal expansion factor. This model considered the thermal
cycling influence for solider joint life, so the expression of
thermal cycling caused fatigue damage factor as:
1 (5)
Dth =
Nf
B. Model of Vibration Fatigue Life under Vibration Loading
In the real application of electronic equipment, normally,
the vibration condition has the statistic characteristics of
stability, which can be seen as a random vibration when
modeling. Through studying vibration characteristics of board
level electronic equipment, statistical characteristic of
corresponding external excitation which with stable statistic
characteristics for different position of circuits board can then
be approached. For the failure caused by vibration fatigue
damage, solider joint life can be predicted based Coffin-
Manson fatigue mode as:
Δε t Δε el Δε pl σ f
'
( 2 N f ) + ε 'f ( 2 N f )
b c
= + = (6)
2 2 2 E
Where: Δε t is total strain range; Δε el is elastic strain range;
Δε pl is plastic strain range; σ 'f is fatigue strength exponent; E
is elastic modulus of material; ε 'f is fatigue plastic coefficient;
b is fatigue strength exponent; c is fatigue plastic exponent.
Δε t is the relationship between total strain range and
fatigue life can be then written as:
 Eh3 ( w1 (l ) − w2 (l ) )
Δε t = h3 (7)
6 (1 − u ) kA 2 2
Where: E is elastic modulus of circuit board; h is thickness
of circuit board; u is Poisson's ratio; A is area of solider joint; l
is length of solider joint outer surface; w1 is the movement of
PBGA encapsulation; w1 is movement of circuit board; k is
estimated value of encapsulation caused printed circuit board
vibration load curvature radius.
Based on huge amount material fatigue life tests, Coffin-
Manson found the fatigue strength index b and fatigue plastic
index c is -0.12 and -0.6 correspondingly. The related total
strain range is Δε t which has the relationship with fatigue life,
and can be seen as:
σ 'f
Δε t = 3.5 N f -0.12 + D 0.6 N f -0.6 (8)
E fatigue and periodic vibration, the solider joint fatigue life can
This article only considers the elastic strain, instead of
fatigue, then Manson empirical fatigue formula can be
simplified as:
σ 'f (9)
Δε t = 3.5 N f -0.12
E Nv
Vibration cycling fatigue caused fatigue damage factor can
then be expressed as (10), there into: Dv is random vibration
cycling fatigue caused damage cumulating; Nf is the vibration
load cumulated solider joint fatigue life.
1 (10)
Dv =
Nf
C. Life Prediction Method for Multi Failure Modes
When the stress applied on material higher than its fatigue
limit, strain cycle can consume part of its life, which can result
certain level of damage. This damage may cumulate. As the
damage achieves threshold value, the whole system will be
destroyed; this is so called fatigue damage cumulating theory.
For the time being, Miner rule is the most representative and
mostly used linear fatigue damage cumulating theory. When
thermal cycling and vibration fatigue stress load both applied,
miner theory complied. Also according to fatigue cumulating
damage theory, with constant-amplitude stress applied, after n
cycle caused damage.
Where: ni and Ni is the cycling counts of stress load Si and
fatigue life, m is the number of variable amplitude load.
m
ni
D=∑ (11)
i =1 Ni
With using of Miner linear damage cumulating theory to
approximate superposition thermal stress and vibration stress
caused total cumulating damage factor is Dtotal. As for the
solider joint which with stand thermal fatigue and vibration
fatigue, the fatigue damage factor can be expressed as:
13
nth nv ⎛ f f 1 ⎞ (12)
Dtotal = Dth + Dv = + = nth ⎜ v th + ⎟
N th N v ⎝ Nv Nth ⎠
Where: Dv is vibration fatigue caused fatigue damage
factor; Dth is thermal cycling fatigue caused fatigue damage
factor; nth is actual thermal cycling cycle; fv is vibration
frequency; fth is thermal cycling frequency.
When Dtotal = 1, solider joint can be seen as ultimate fatigue
damaged; when Dtotal ≤ 1, solider joint has certain level of
fatigue which will not fail. As solider joint fatigue failure
principle not defined very well, with both thermal cycling and
vibration applied, the defect cannot be avoided, this will lead to
uncertainty of life prediction, normal margin of safety Dtotal≤
0.7.
Normally, the number of thermal fatigue cycle can always
expressed as number of vibration fatigue cycle. Anyhow,
comprehensively considered, quasi-periodic thermal cycle
be expressed as (13), as for Nf is number of thermal cycling
fatigue:
Dtotal (13)
Nf =
f v fth 1
+
N th
D. Analysis of Residual Strength Reliability
Since the solider joint residual strength degradation rule has
the characteristic of ‘Sudden Death’, in other words, the
residual strength start with lower degrading rate. When the
cycle index approaches the fatigue life, the residual strength
degraded dramatically till the whole system failed. This article
mainly uses the residual strength reliability model from Scaff,
as (14),
⎛ n ⎞
c0
R(n) = R(0) − ⎡⎣ R(0) − S p ⎤⎦ ⎜ 0 ⎟ (14)
⎝N ⎠
According to Miner’s cumulative damage theory, since
cumulative damage of fatigue are the same, the occurrence
frequency of different kind of stress loading failure model can
be transformed into equivalent effect number of constant
amplitude stress with initial stress applied. Making a
hypothesis, S0 is the T0 dominated constant amplitude thermal
stress load, N0 is the corresponding fatigue life, within S0 cycle,
T1 caused thermal vibration stress load is Si0 (i=1,2,…,m), ni1
and Ni1 indicate cycle index Si1 and fatigue life correspondingly.
When consider the theory of cumulative damage, variable
amplitude stress load Si1 with ni1 cycles caused total cumulative
fatigue damage D1 equal to S0 cycle with ne times caused total
cumulative fatigue damage, and then utilize equation (11),
which can then be expressed as:
m
ni1 ne
D1 = ∑ = (15)
i =1 Ni1 N 0
From (15), S0 number of equivalent effect ne can be
calculated, then the total damage caused by T0 and T1 after S0
cycle shown as:
 ne + 1 m ni1 1 (16) vibration fatigue is quite different from temperature cycling
Dall =D1 + D 0 = =∑ 1 + 0 fatigue. Therefore, simply linear superposition may be not
N0 i =1 N i N
appropriate for combined these two loadings. Combined
Till now, T1 caused fatigue damage can be expressed as S0, loading experiment is then performed to verify it.
according to equation (15) with considering all kind of
different failure modes, the structure residual strength
reliability under S0 cycling n times can be explained as
following:
c0
⎡ ⎛ m n1 1 ⎞⎤
R(n) = R(0) − ⎡⎣ R(0) − S 0 ⎤⎦ ⎢ n ⎜ ∑ i1 + 0 ⎟ ⎥ (17)
N
⎣ ⎝ i =1 i N ⎠⎦

III. SIMULATION
In order to verify the life prediction model and residual
strength reliability model, some simulation researches have
been performed for thermal and random vibration cycling of
63Sn37Pb alloy solder samples with using Monte-Carlo Figure 4. Simulation and Test Results under Thermal Fatigue Cycling
method. Table I is the compound parameters of solder alloy
63Sn37Pb samples. Table II is the summary of the
environmental test.

TABLE I. THE COMPOUND PARAMETERS OF SOLDER 63SN37PB

Parameter LD h ∆α ∆T F

Value 19.1mm 0.45mm 2.7 ppm/℃ 200℃ 1.0

TABLE II. SUMMARY OF ENVIRONMENTAL TESTS

Tests Stress Loading Notes

24 minutes ramp and Figure 5. Simulation and Test Results under Vibration Fatigue Cycling
Thermal Cycling -50/150℃
15 minutes dwell
Frequency from
Random Vibration 0.1 G2/Hz
100 to 1000Hz
Combined Loading -50/150℃ & 0.1 G2/Hz Concurrently

The paper is using Monte - Carlo method to predict life

cycle and residual strength reliability, since all related
parameters are complicated, the simulation with massive
samples is difficult to carry out. In this study, 500 samples are
using for analysis, based on the life evolving trend which under
solider joint thermal cycling, the thermal fatigue life predict
modeling and vibration modeling are performed.
Figure 4 shows the life change trend of simulation and test
results under thermal fatigue cycling, the cumulative failure
rate increase with the thermal cycling. Thermal cycling test was
stopped after 4002 cycles with nine components failed and six
survived. The mean fatigue life of the samples was 2467 cycles
(3207 hours) under this thermal cycling condition.
Figure 5 shows the life change trend of simulation and test
results under vibration fatigue cycling, the cumulative failure
rate increase with the vibration cycling. Vibration test was
stopped after 2237 hours exposure. Six components failed and
nine survived. The mean life of the samples was calculated to
2922 hours under this vibration loading condition. It was
noticed, the shape parameter of vibration test results is much
lower than the one in thermal cycling test. It indicates the
Figure 6. Simulation and Test Results Combined the Thermal and Vibration
Fatigue Cycling
Simulation and test results which combined the thermal and
vibration fatigue cycling show in Figure 6. Combined thermal
cycling and vibration test was completed after 2953 hours
exposure with all components failed. The mean life of the
samples was calculated to 192 hours under combined loading.
Combined temperature cycling and vibration test was
completed after 2953 hours exposure with all components
failed. The mean life of the samples was calculated to 192
hours under combined loading. The experimental results show
the time to failure of components significantly shorter under
the combined loading compared to test results under

14
temperature cycling alone and vibration alone. The earlier
failure phenomena indicate the interaction exists between
temperature cycling and vibration loading. That interaction
may change the vibration response of board, the stress state in
solder, and the fatigue properties.
Chart III shows the compared life results between experime
ntal ones based on article [4] and simulated ones according t
o Monte-Carlo method. The life prediction result can be predict
ed very precisely, the predicted values are very much close to t
he real value with only considered the thermal cycling and vibr
ation cycling. But there are a kind of big deviations for the pred
ict value with coupling applied, which is as bit larger than the r
eal value, the way of chosen parameters and samples are influe
nce the results very much, the further study needs to be introdu
ced for this.
TABLE III. COMPARISON OF TEST AND SIMULATION RESULTS
Tests Result Simulation Result Deviation
3207 3662 12.4%
Thermal Cycling
2922 3283 10.9%
Random Vibration
192 792 75.7%
Combined Loading
IV. CONCLUSION
As time turns to page, the developing of life prediction by
physics of failure methods makes it an overall trend that it is
replacing the traditional electronic product reliance prediction
method. Based on the two common failure mechanisms and its
respective physics of failure models on electronic thermal
fatigue and vibration fatigue, this article uses the analysis of the
environmental profile on whole-life-cycle of electronic product
to ensure the vibrating environment and temperature condition
that it bears, in addition, it uses vibration analysis and thermal
analysis to obtain the level of mechanical and thermal
environmental stress on potential point of failure, as well as the
physics of failure model to study the time to single point of
failure, in which the reliable analysis on the coupling of
independent failure modes are also considered.
15
The achievement of this article appears to be a method of
electronic product life prediction, which is based on the co-
work of thermal fatigue and vibration fatigue analysis is
proposed. In accompany with the reliance analysis on residual
stress theory, and the simulation of predication model via
Monte-Carlo method, it eventually achieved the expected effect
while comparing with the real test data. Considering the
methods of mechanics only, or thermal physics of failure,
which are already used in foreign countries, the method above
leads to a more reasonable and comprehensive result to predict
the lifetime of an electronic product, while it also provides a
new thought to comprehensively evaluate the electronic
product reliance under the effects of multiple failure
mechanisms, which as well provides a basis to guide the tests
on coupling of multiple failure modes under complex
environments.
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