Nonlinear damage accumulation rule for solder life prediction under combined temperature profile with varying amplitude

Due to a mismatch of the coefficient of thermal expansion, electronic solder joints experience cyclic shear strain, which ultimately leads to fatigue failure. Traditional predictions of solder joint thermal fatigue life that use the experimental data or the physics-of-failure model often assume a regular profile. For complex temperature profiles, the linear accumulation rule is typically used to integrate the superposition effect. However, the linear rule was proved not applicable to most of the complex loading or temperature conditions. Based on the damage curve theory and the fatigue crack propagation theory, a novel nonlinear accumulation rule has been deduced for solder joint life predictions under irregular profiles, which were composed of two standard temperature cycles and may be experienced by phased-mission system. Four groups of experiments were conducted for ball grid array package solder joints with different dimensions and materials to determine parameters of the proposed nonlinear accumulation rule. The finite-element simulation method was used to extend this rule to more general cases for application. Compared to Miner's linear accumulation rule, prediction of solder joint thermal fatigue life via the proposed nonlinear accumulation rule is closer to the accelerated life test results of real-world electronic solder joints under a combined temperature profile.