Dynamic Response Characteristics and Fatigue Life Prediction of Printed Circuit Boards for Random Vibration Environments

The study focuses on the analysis of the surface mounted components of the printed circuit boards (PCB) under random vibration loading. The surface mount technology used for the study involves ball grid arrays. In order to predict the fatigue life of the component under certain defense and automotive applications, modal analysis is done by using the finite element method. The results are verified experimentally using JEDEC standards to validate the finite element design used for the study, and random vibration experiments were performed with finite element analysis. The fatigue life of PCB under different random vibration environments is predicted and compared. The fatigue life of PCB is least with jet cargo environment and is maximum with rail cargo environment. The analysis reveals that under the jet cargo environment, more numbers of natural frequency excitations are present. It was found that upon loading, maximum stress was found to be induced at the corner of solder balls for packages mounted in the center of the PCB. Hence, it is suggested to incorporate design modification such that the central area of the PCB must not contain any packaging designs.