Failure behavior and life prediction of through-hole solder joints under thermal cycling

Pin-through-hole (PTH) connection is one of the most common types of connection between components and circuit board. Taking the printed circuit board (PCB) of the typical electronic product air conditioner as research object, thermal fatigue behavior and failure mechanism of the through-hole solder joints were investigated by accelerated aging experiments and finite element analysis (FEA). Results showed that, besides that of the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch between the materials in the solder joint assembly, the influence of solder joint structure and component weight the pin supporting on the cumulative damage to solder joints were indispensable. Compared with the typical supported-hole solder joints, solder joints for this paper were more prone to the damage as component pin peeling off solder. And fatigue lives of solder joints decreased with component weight increasing. The solder joint lives calculated by FEA were between 1300~1600 cycles, which agreed well with the experimental results.