Moving Automotive Electronics from Reliability/Durability Testing to Virtual Validation Modeling Using a Physics of Failure CAE App

Quality, Reliability, Durability (QRD) and Safety of vehicular Electrical/Electronics (E/E) systems traditionally have resulted from arduous rounds of Design-Built-Test-Fix (DBTF) Reliability and Durability Growth Testing. Such tests have historically required 12-16 or more weeks of Accelerated Life Testing (ALT), for each round of validation in a new product development program. Challenges have arisen from:

• The increasing number of E/E modules in today's vehicle places a high burden on supplier's test labs and budgets.
• The large size and mass of electric vehicle power modules results in a lower test acceleration factors which can extend each round of ALT to 5-6 months.
• Durability failures tend to occur late in life testing, resulting in the need to: perform a root cause investigation, fix the problem, build new prototype parts and then repeat the test to verify problem resolutions, which severely stress program budgets and schedules.

To resolve these challenges, automakers and E/E suppliers are moving to Physics of Failure (PoF) based durability simulations and reliability assessment solutions performed in a Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) Environment. When PoF knowledge is converted into math models and integrated into CAE durability simulations and reliability assessments tools, it can be determined if and when a device will be susceptible to failure mechanisms over its life cycle.