Evaluation of the relationship between stress and lifetime of Pb-free solder joints subjected to vibration load using a generalized local stress approach

Abstract The article proposes a generalized high cycle fatigue evaluation methodology for solder joints based on a local stress finite element method (FEM) and compares with experimental results. A method to predict the damage initiation of surface mount technology (SMT) solder joints is accomplished in this article by making use of generic coupon level SAC387 solder specimens. High cycle fatigue (HCF) experiments conducted on generic solder specimens are followed by means of FKM guidelines, which are translated to microelectronic elements for the first time. The FEM predicted lifetime values of solder joints agree with the experimental results performed on SMT components. In addition, the overall results show that the predicted values act as a threshold damage line from which the solder joint failure regimes can be differentiated. The results also show the differences in the predicted damage line and failure line for SMT solder joints.