Modeling Damage Accumulation in Solder Joints

Northrop Grumman Corporation Engineering, 2009-10

Liaison(s): Todd Uramoto, Bill Vanier, Charles Volk
Advisor(s): Philip Cha
Students(s): Scott Almond (F), Shawn Duenas (TL-S), Nicolas Hasegawa, Alex Krause, Brendan Smith (S), Lou Zellinger (TL-F)

The goal of this project was to identify, test, and verify, a model to predict the number of times a particular circuit board can be subjected to its thermal cycling acceptance test before significant damage is accumulated in the form of crack initiation at the solder joints. A finite element analysis was employed to predict the time to crack initiation. Results from the model were compared to an experimental test in an environmental chamber using the aforementioned profile.