How to detect the reliability of PCB in automotive electronics design?

Reliability is very important in automotive electronics, and nowadays, in view of the time-to-market and cost reductions, it is increasingly necessary to analyze the physical prototypes in the software virtual prototype environment relative to the test room. At present, due to the existence of software, electronic and mechanical designers can carry out more PCB simulation scenarios.

Automotive electronics is not completely different from other complex electronic products: multiple central processors, networks, real-time data collection, and extremely complex PCBs. The design pressure of the automotive industry is similar to other types of electronic products: short design time and fierce market competition. So what is the difference between automotive electronics and electronics such as some high-end entertainment products? A world apart! If the PCB fails in an entertainment product, people's lives are not threatened; but if something goes wrong in the car, people's lives are in jeopardy. Therefore, the reliability design of automotive electronic components is a major aspect to be considered in the design process.

Time and cost pressure

As with all products that are under pressure from design time and development costs, automotive components are no exception. A development practice can help electronics companies meet these basic business goals by using virtual prototyping to analyze designs without having to spend time and time building multiple physical prototypes, testing these models, and making test results based on the results. Incremental modifications. In addition, many factors that affect product reliability can be discovered after weeks, months, or years of physical damage. Therefore physical prototypes in these cases are not a viable way. Even in the experimental cabin, you can't accurately and accurately replicate years of physical oscillations, thermal environments, vibrations, and temperature cycling damage.

Simulation is the key

Simulation, or virtual prototyping, has become an increasingly important step in the design process. As mentioned earlier, simulation not only saves time and expense in the development process, but also simulates longer-term abuse effects in the harsh environment of the car. Like ExpediTIon Enterprise, the complex PCB system design solution contains many forms of virtual prototyping capabilities, including:

Analog and digital signal integrity analysis

Electromagnetic interference

Thermal management

Power integrity

Oscillation and vibration

Manufacturing design

One convention that takes advantage of all of these features is that a good designer will use all the features throughout the design process, rather than waiting until the end (Figure 1). It was not until the end of the process that the simulation results were combined to redesign, wasting time and effort and being easy to compromise. Integrating a good virtual prototype into the design process can lead to over-engineering (that is, using a very conservative design approach), but often the result is increased product cost and loss performance, while still not guaranteeing continuous reliability. Let's take a look at three good virtual prototype practices in the product development process.

How to detect the reliability of PCB in automotive electronics design?


Figure 1: Virtual prototypes should be used throughout the design process


Thermal control

The most critical point affecting reliability (here in terms of performance) is heat. Overheating of integrated circuits (ICs) can cause problems over time, and the automotive environment can become very ruthless. For example, overheating the components in the engine compartment, or driving through the climate from the winter in Michigan to the summer in Arizona. From the beginning of the IC package, through the PCB, to the complete product in the operating environment, should be able to control the heat. So we need to use virtual prototyping at all stages of the design to ensure we have a hot and reliable product.

First, IC vendors typically analyze component packaging and provide thermal characterization models. Then we hope to analyze the stand-alone PCB as the design unfolds. PCB designers often need an analysis of the layout of their work components to determine if they have created a board that is difficult to cool. Moreover, this work is not only a rough consideration of the heat dissipation and position distribution of the device. Due to the many heat dissipation paths (heat sink, copper inside the board, transfer, conduction, and divergence...), the data passed from the PCB design system to the thermal analysis must be complete. The setup and execution of the analysis software must also be fairly straightforward, because the PCB designer who wants to use the software is not necessarily a thermal expert and does not delay the design process.

However, the final virtual prototype must be executed in a single or multiple PCB conditions in the final product enclosure in an expected automotive environment. This type of analysis is common in the field of mechanical design where a typical mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) system has a complete physical definition of the product, including enclosures, mounting methods, heat sinks and hot rails, and PCBs. PCB designers must pass PCB design data to the mechanical designer to embed them in the enclosure. The MCAD system requires complete 3D physical definition and thermal characteristics for components and their leads, as well as for all components of a complete product. Mechanical designers then use the software such as FloTHERM from Mentor, using computational fluid dynamics combined with convection, radiation, and heat transfer analysis to determine if the IC exceeds the critical temperature and whether it can cause reliability or performance problems.

FloTHERM has now expanded to not only determine the IC junction temperature, but also to give designers guidance on the causes of problems and how to solve them. The software can find the "hot bottleneck" to show which part of the heat flow path is restricted. Designers can use this information to identify alternative component mounting techniques, as well as better thermal conduction paths from the PCB to the enclosure, to alleviate bottlenecks.

Another valuable approach is to identify “hot shortcuts” that point to potential design options that can speed up heat dissipation. The example of Figure 2 shows the original problem of a high thermal IC and a shortcut to solve the problem. In this case, a padding pad is added between the IC and the outer casing to form a more direct environmental heat transfer path. This simple change can reduce the IC temperature by 74%.

Miniature Circuit Breaker

Mini Circuit breakers, also named as the air switch which have a short for arc extinguishing device. It is a switch role, and also is a automatic protection of low-voltage electrical distribution. Its role is equivalent to the combination of switch. Fuse. Thermal Relay and other electrical components. It mainly used for short circuit and overload protection. Generally, According to the poles, mini Circuit breaker can be divided into 1P , 1P+N , 2P, 3P and 4P.


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Wenzhou Korlen Electric Appliances Co., Ltd. , https://www.zjmannualmotorstarter.com

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