REMAINING LIFE PREDICTION OF ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS USING LIFE CONSUMPTION MONITORING APPROACH

Various kinds of failures may occur in electronic products because of their life cycle environmental conditions including temperature, humidity, shock and vibration. Failure mechanism models are available to estimate the time to failure for most of these failures. Hence if the life cycle environment of a product can be determined, it is possible to assess the amount of damage induced and predict when the product might fail. This paper presents a life consumption monitoring methodology to determine the remaining life of a product. A battery powered data recorder is used to monitor the temperature, shock and vibration loads on a printed circuit board assembly placed under the hood of an automobile. The recorded data is used in conjunction with physics-of-failure models to determine the damage accumulation in the solder joints due to temperature and vibration loading. The remaining life of the solder joints of the test board is then obtained from the damage accumulation information. 1. Reliability Prediction Reliability is defined as the ability of a product to perform as intended (i.e., without failure and within specified performance limits) for a specified time, in its life cycle application environment. Over time, technology improvements have lead to higher I/O counts in components and circuit cards of electronic products. This has resulted in significant downsizing of interconnect thicknesses, making them more vulnerable in field applications. At the same time, increase in warranties and severe liabilities of electronic product failure have compelled manufacturers to predict the reliability of their products in field applications. An efficient reliability prediction scheme can be used for many purposes including [1]: • Logistics support (e.g., forecast warranty and life cycle costs, spare parts provisioning, availability)