Date of Award

8-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Civil Engineering

Committee Chair/Advisor

Laura Redmond

Committee Member

Weichiang Pang

Committee Member

Qiushi Chen

Abstract

With the increasing prevalence of electronic equipment worldwide, there is also a decrease in the size of the components on their printed circuit boards (PCBs), leading to an increase in the density of these components. A significant amount of failure in electronic equipment is vibration fatigue of solder joints and their attachments. However, the complexity of these PCBs and their components has made finite element modeling (FEM) more complex, adding considerable time to create and analyze a model.

This paper aims to provide a literature review for the vibration fatigue of leaded solder components, create a test setup, and validate an analytical solder joint stress model. The literature review provides a walkthrough on modeling PCBs and their components using FEMs and analytical models, fatigue modeling methodology, and fatigue testing data and highlights gaps in the literature. This review was important to compile due to the limited data and the rigor required to find it all when searching. With this literature review collected, testing was to be completed using an analytical model highlighted. Therefore, a setup and procedure have been developed to test the vibration fatigue of leaded solder attachments. The setup combines a test specimen, specimen mounting head, and preliminary model correlation between the test specimen and FEM. Using initial model correlations, an analytical solder joints stress model, and fatigue curves from literature, a vibration fatigue life prediction was made for the test specimen, and tests were run. However, the results were inconclusive and further testing is deemed necessary. Suggestions have been made, such as picking other analytical models to test, modifying the test setup, and increasing the fidelity of local areas in the FEM.

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