Board-Level Vibration Failure Criteria for Printed Circuit Assemblies: An Experimental Approach

The assessment of the capability of electronic equipment, to withstand harsh vibration environments, is an issue faced in several branches of engineering. Various researchers have studied the vibration response of electronic boards using different parameters, e.g., local board accelerations, bending moments, curvatures, etc., as a simpler alternative to very detailed stress analysis. However, the issue of what parameter best correlates with vibration failures remains open. This paper investigates this specific problem using an experimental approach to assess whether it is possible to correlate failures produced by intense vibrations, with a single macroscopic parameter such as the local board acceleration, curvature, or surface strain. Printed circuit boards populated with a grid of electronic components (20 different types and 32 identical components per type) have been subjected to vibration testing and the results show that there is a very good correlation between the board curvature (and its surface strain) and failures of the electronics. The work also shows that-for the components tested here-local board acceleration cannot be used to predict components failures. Although this research has focused on a particular set of components, these are representative of typical classes of electronic components, and therefore it should be possible to generalize the conclusions to similar hardware.