high-tech

The solder joints of surface-mount electronic devices may fail because of low-cycle fatigue. Combined with differences in thermal expansion properties for the various components of the assembly, cyclic thermal loading induces stress reversals and the potential accumulation of inelastic strain in the joints. Predicting solder joint fatigue life requires a thorough understanding of the deformation and failure mechanisms of the solder alloy and an accurate

Lead and its compounds have been widely used for many years in the electronics industry. However, the global demand to reduce the use of hazardous materials has compelled electronics manufacturers to consider the use of lead-free materials in future products. This transition has heightened the necessity for new finite element material models that can be used to evaluate the reliability of lead-free solders.

The computational analysis of MEMS (Micro Electro Me-chanical systems) devices poses distinctive challenges, requiring software that provides flexible modeling tools, enables the coupling of multiple physical phenomena, and considers the integration of the devices into their macro-scale surroundings. To meet these requirements, Abaqus partners with developers of commercially available MEMS software by providing the necessary finite element analy-sis capabilities to these packages.

Portable, hand-held electronic devices have become commonplace due to their small size and light weight. It is inevitable that such devices will occasionally experience the shock loading associated with being dropped. Ac-counting for this loading scenario in the design process, both analytically and experimentally, allows for the devel-opment of more durable products. The ability to simulate drop-type loading reliably reduces the dependency on experimental testing.

Each year companies spend millions of dollars for developing new products with high quality and reliability. Highly reliable products require longer test times to verify, and usually takes a few iteration of design-test-fix cycle. Development time can be minimized by (1) doing accelerated testing (ALT) and (2) reducing the design-test-fix cycle by developing methods to predict and test for reliability in simulation environment. Finite element modeling and analysis provides an excellent alternative in evaluating designs to improve on reliability.

Paper transport is one of the areas under media handling methods where papers are transported by rollers through different path ways. The challenge in media handling is to transport the paper smoothly with out jam or in-plane deviation (paper skew). The smooth flow of paper is influenced by grade of paper, complexity of flow path, roller speed, roller pre-loads and significantly the roller material. It is also costly and difficult to develop a physical flow path testing.

With the trend towards miniaturization and multi-functionality in products such as mobile electronic devices, miniature IC packaging such as fine pitch Ball Grid Array (BGA) package and Chip Size Package (CSP) are increasingly being used. However, the inherent vulnerability of these miniature IC packagings has brought along new reliability problems. Among them, the drop/impact robustness is the most challenging in terms of testing and designing.

A printer chassis provides an important function of locating and securing the relative position of all the sub-systems that makeup a printer. The customer location could be thousands of miles away from the factory and many modes of transportation are required from ship, train, trucks, forklift, to pushing across corridors, stairs and elevators. The transportation loads are the most sever the printer would see in its life time. These include impacts on all sides at 3 MPH to an 8 inch vertical drop.

Random response analysis is a linear approach, while most real life random vibrations involve nonlinear components. It is challenge to analyze a nonlinear system subjected to random vibration. This paper presents an Abaqus FEA approach on the fatigue life calculation of an automobile assembly with rubber isolators subjected to random vibration. Random loading is categorized using Power Spectral Density (PSD). An equivalent dynamic analysis or a random response analysis was used to obtain the maximum stress level and location from random vibration.

Consumers demand smaller electronics devices with more features and capabilities. Making devices smaller provides challenges to engineers to maintain the acoustic performances as enclosed acoustic volume sizes are reduced. This paper discusses the requirements for coupled

structural-acoustic simulation and demonstrates the application of this technology to cell-phone