Development of Computationally Efficient Numerical Models for Assessing the Reliability of Electronic Components under Vibration Loads

This paper focuses on developing efficient models based on the Finite Element Method for data synthesis that is useful for solder joint reliability predictions under vibration tests. Starting from an existing detailed 3D Finite Element model of a vibration test vehicle assembled with Flip Chip components, efficiency optimized models were generated. Models were simplified to make use of periodically present structures. The equivalent inelastic strain occurring in the corner solder joints of the Flip Chip components was extracted from the simulation results and was further evaluated to assess the simulation accuracy. While cutting the calculation time down to 9 minutes, the modifications introduced strain result deviations that however did not exceed 15%. Replacing volume elements in thin structures with shell elements helped to significantly reduce the number of elements and nodes, thus shortening the calculation time. Additionally, implementing a submodeling approach did significantly reduce the calculation time, too.