Material Property Variability of Composites in Thermo-Mechanical Studies Involving Virtual Design of Experiments

A new methodology for considering thermo-mechanical material property variability in virtual design of experiment (vDoE) studies is presented. For the estimation of the lower and upper bounds of the properties, theoretical models and relevant correlations between material properties are presented. The focus for the bounds definition is given to composite materials, i.e., a mixture of two or more homogeneous dissimilar materials, such as metal matrix composites (MMCs), ceramic matrix composites (CMC), etc. For not composite materials, alternative approaches for defining the bounds are discussed. To exemplify the implementation of the proposed methodology, a vDoE of a 2-D finite element (FE) thermo-mechanical model of an electronic package is presented, followed by a discussion regarding the influence of material property variability on the model’s thermo-mechanical responses.