Thermally Induced Fatigue Modeling

and Assessment

Temesgen Kindo Kyle Koppenhoefer

Applications Engineer Principal
COMSOL AltaSim Technologies
 Agenda
• Assessing thermal fatigue
• Live Demo
– Thermal fatigue damages in solder
joints
• Fatigue analysis in the COMSOL
Multiphysics® software
• Q&A Visualization of temperature, cycles to failure, and stress in the solder
joints of two ball grid assemblies.

• How to try the software

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Thermally-Induced Fatigue Modeling and Assessment

Kyle C. Koppenhoefer
Joshua Thomas
AltaSim Technologies, LLC

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 Why assess thermal fatigue?
Courtesy of Barqtron

$1B to the US economy each year

High voltage cables

Petrochemical Industry

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Electronics 4
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 What is Thermal Fatigue?
Temperature

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 What is Thermal Fatigue?

Price, Chang and Kerezsi, SIF2004

Poursaeidi and Bazvandi, Applied Thermal Engineering, 100 (2016)

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© AltaSim Technologies. All Rights Reserved. Persson, et al. Int Journal of Fatigue, 26 (2004)
 How is Thermal Fatigue Assessed?

Heat Structural
Transfer Mechanics
Coupling

• Transient • Thermal Expansion

• Heat Source • Constraint
• Conduction • Non-linear materials
• Convection • Fatigue assessment
• Radiation • Temp Dep Mat Props
• Temp Dep Mat Props

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 High Cycle vs. Low Cycle Fatigue
Plastic Deformation
Strain Range Controlled

Elastic Deformation

Stress Range
Stress Range Controlled

𝜎0

Low Cycle High Cycle

Fatigue Fatigue

100 104 107

Cycles to Failure

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 Decision process for assessing fatigue

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 Thermal fatigue damages components

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 Thermal loading can produce fatigue cracks in BGA

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 Thermal fatigue damages solder joints in ball grid array

• Low-cycle fatigue
• Thermally-induced viscoplastic deformation
• Extremely challenging to measure directly
– Structural complexity
– Size of solder joints
• Computational simulation provides powerful tool

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 DEMONSTRATION MODEL

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 Surface mount resistor attached to

NiCr Conductor

Solder
Resistor

Copper Pad

Printed Circuit Board

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 Thermo-mechanical analysis including creep

Heat Structural
Transfer Mechanics
Coupling

Joule Heating Thermal Expansion

Conduction Plasticity
Convection Creep
Temperature-Dependent Mat Props Temperature-Dependent Mat Props

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 Thermal conditions are time varying, spatially uniform
temperature
Thermal Cycle

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 Mechanical conditions includes different CTEs and creep

Symmetry
Garofalo creep model:

CTE = 8e-6 1/K

CTE = 21e-6 1/K

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 Fatigue assessed using strain-life method

𝜀𝑓′ ∆𝜀𝑝
= 𝜀𝑓′ (2𝑁)𝑐
2
𝑐
𝜀𝑓′ =0.281
)
1

2
∆𝜀
𝐿𝐿𝐿( 𝑐=-0.51
∆𝜀𝑒𝑒
2
∆𝜀𝑝
2

100 103 104

Log (Cycles to Failure)

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 DEMONSTRATION

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 Summary – Assessing Thermal Fatigue

• Impacts the US economy by $1B / year

• Temperature gradients in time and or space can produce large
fatigue loads
• High loads often produce fatigue failures in less than 1,000 cycles
• Computational simulation provides an excellent tool for assessing
these Multiphysics challenges

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© AltaSim Technologies. All Rights Reserved.
COMSOL Multiphysics®
COMSOL Server™
App Deployment
The COMSOL® Product Suite
Fatigue in Theory
 High-cycle and Low-cycle fatigue
• HCF • LCF
– > approximately 10000 – <approximately 10000
cycles cycles
– Elastic deformation – Plastic deformation
– Stress range controlled – Strain range controlled
 Stress-Life

S-N curve Approximate S-N curve

Basquin
 Strain-Life
• E-N curve
• Coffin-Manson
• Combined
Basquin and
Coffin-Manson
Fatigue Analysis Procedure in COMSOL®
Structural analysis
of a
• Solid Mechanics
load cycle – Thermal Stress
– Joule Heating and Thermal
Expansion
– Piezoelectric Devices
• Shell
• Plate
Fatigue
Analysis • Multibody Dynamics
Adding a Fatigue Physics
Fatigue Module
• The Fatigue Module is an
add-on to the Structural
Mechanics Module

• For fatigue analysis of

nonlinear materials the
Nonlinear Structural
Materials Module needed
Fatigue in Reality
Random or Variable Amplitude Cumulative Damage
• Rainflow counting

• Damage Estimation
– Palmgren-Miner
Non-Proportional Multiaxial Loading
• Cracks lead to failure
• Need to know the
stress state at the
critical plane
• In general the critical
plane can not be
found analytically
• Solution: numerical
search for critical
plane
 Critical Plane Methods

• Stress-Based
• Strain-Based
 Stress-Based
• Findley
• Matake
• Normal stress
 Strain-Based
• Smith-Watson-Topper
• Wang-Brown
• Fatemi-Socie
 Energy-Based
• Morrow
• Darveaux
Fatigue Model Selection
Fatigue Model Specification
 Resources

Blogs: http:///www.comsol.com/blogs/category/all/fatigue
Cyclopedia: https://www.comsol.com/multiphysics/material-fatigue
Q&A
The COMSOL® Product Suite
 Further Resources
• Introduction to COMSOL Multiphysics®
– The COMSOL Desktop®
– Step-by-Step Tutorials
– Advanced Topics
• Introduction to Application Builder
– The Application Builder environment
– Using the Form Editor and Method Editor
– Distributing and running applications
• Manager’s Guide
• White papers and handbooks
• Success stories

www.comsol.com/resources
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