Thermo-mechanical investigations on the effects of the solder meniscus design in solder joint lifetime for power electronic devices

The crack and delamination of solder joints between base plates and DCB substrates of power modules is one of the most frequently encountered failure mode and studied in literature. In this paper we present numerical effects of solder meniscus design in solder lifetime prediction. Especially, we show the effect of singular points, which appear in the border edges or corners of DCB or solder joints geometries, in mechanical stress, strain and plastic work evaluations. Furthermore the effect of mesh density on mechanical stress and strains is shown. Finally, we will see the effect of the meniscus design of the solder joint on lifetime estimation using both plastic strain-based and energy-based models.