Accelerated Testing and Reliability estimation of electronic boards for automotive applications

Electronic and microelectronic components installed in automotive applications are subjected to different kinds of stress sources. These stresses can generate a variety of different operating conditions on the devices with major effects on their reliability performances. In this paper, a High Temperature Operating Life (HTOL) test plan have been carried out on a set of thirty electronic boards for automotive applications. The result of this accelerated life test is a dataset containing the time to failure of the components, which has been used to carry out a life data analysis in order to estimate the failure rate and reliability of the electronic boards. The paper presents a comparison between different estimation methods and different life distributions (Weibull, Exponential, Lognormal and Gamma) used to evaluate the reliability parameters of the components. The results highlight the ability of the Weibull distribution to precisely describe the reliability of electronics for automotive applications.