Importance of vibration testing for new technological configurations in electronics

This paper is related to EURIPIDES project “Board on Board” (BoB) supervised by Thales Communication. The aim of this project is to develop and validate an innovative solution for realization of high-density boards beyond the SMD limits found, remaining reliable and reparable. In more the challenge is to satisfy the customer demand regarding the reliability in harsh environments and in long mission profile. An innovative solution is to have two boards with components only on one face and assembled then in such a way that it is possible to take them apart if repairing is needed. To reach such challenging objective, all the supply chain is needed, from base materials provider up to end-users, including PCB manufacturer and SMD assembler shall be considered. Additional important issues like signal and power integrity, thermal studies or mechanical assembly considerations coupling with design rules will be highly desired. A part of each new construction is also mechanical and thermomechanical reliability. There is the fact that vibrations and shocks cause some tens of percent of the mechanical failures in the airborne electronics [1]. Therefore each new solution for board´s design and their arrangement under operation asks for ensuring equipment survival in harsh environment a mechanical testing. Shock and vibration tests are also essential step to the assurance of relevant quality and reliability. There is described an approach to vibration testing of the new designed configuration including vibration simulations through software ANSYS. This results help to designers to choose the optimal configuration including placement of components and to avoid later problems in the application area.