Electrical / Electronics for Reliable Systems for Automotive Applications

Experience shows that when a Electrical & Electronic concern is identified in final assembly in automotive application, the failure analysis is expensive and major time consuming to determine the real root cause tracing components, subsystems, computer software or even a combination of them. This paper discusses typical failure mechanisms for hardware — Electrical Over-Stress (EOS), electrical static discharge (ESD) and computer software catastrophic events. Avoidance of failures in software is inextricably linked to failures in the hardware (sensors and actuators). Finally, practical examples are given to illustrate how small changes can cause big incidents.