Prognostics Model Development of BGA Assembly Under Vibration Environment

Application of electronic devices on automotive vehicles keeps increasing, and adoption of ball grid array (BGA) package is inevitable in the industry. Vibration loading to a vehicle provides another hazardous stress to the BGA assembly in addition to thermal one. In this paper, random vibration test on a daisy-chained BGA assembly is conducted with a real-time monitoring of resistance. BGA assemblies with leaded and lead-free solders are tested at once in the test. The changes of resistance before the occurrence of failure are investigated and a precursory resistance pattern before the failure of BGA assemblies is identified at the both solder types. Analyses on the failure locations confirm the localized failures on the BGA ball matrix. To investigate the generating mechanism of the precursory resistance pattern in the BGA assemblies, a numerical model of the mechanism is suggested and experimentally demonstrated. Based on the studies, a noble design of BGA assembly is suggested for the implementation of prognostics and health monitoring in vibration environment.