This Is AuburnElectronic Theses and Dissertations

Health Monitoring for Damage Initiation & Progression During Mechanical Shock in Electronic Assemblies

Date

2007-05-15

Author

Choudhary, Prakriti

Type of Degree

Thesis

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Abstract

Electronic products may be subjected to shock and vibration during shipping, normal usage and accidental drop. Highstrain rate transient bending produced by such loads may result in failure of fine-pitch electronics. Current experimental techniques rely on electrical resistance for determination of failure. Significant advantage can be gained by prior knowledge of impending failure for applications where the consequences of system-failure may be catastrophic. This thesis focuses on an alternate approach to damage-quantification in electronic assemblies subjected to shock and vibration, without testing for electrical continuity. The proposed approach can be extended to monitor product-level damage. Statistical pattern recognition and leading indicators of shock-damage have been used to study the damage initiation and progression in shock and drop of electronic assemblies. Closed-form models have been developed for the eigen-frequencies and mode-shapes of electronic assemblies with various boundary conditions and component placement configurations. Model predictions have been validated with experimental data from modal analysis. Pristine configurations have been perturbed to quantify the degradation in confidence values with progression of damage. Sensitivity of leading indicators of shock-damage to subtle changes in boundary conditions, effective flexural rigidity, and transient strain response have been quantified. A damage index for Experimental Damage Monitoring has been developed using the failure indicators. The above damage monitoring approach is not based on electrical continuity and hence can be applied to any electronic assembly structure irrespective of the interconnections. The damage index developed provides parametric damage progression data, thus removing the limitation of current failure testing, where the damage progression can not be monitored. Hence the proposed method does not require the assumption that the failure occurs abruptly after some number of drops and can be extended to product level drops.