Abstract
Keywords:automotive, reliability, lifetime prediction, physics of failure, accelerated testing
"There is no product that touches more the people, which arouses more emotions, than an automobile" [1].
The automotive industry's highest innovative products thrilled once again at the latest International Motor Show (IAA). And the impact is reflected by the huge effort inside research and development to strengthen innovation.
Mainly the areas of safety, powertrain, comfort and networked vehicle are speeding up to complex and electronically controlled systems. Additional the permanent growing requirements ask for complex systems, consisting of electronics, mechanic and software, with development cycles getting shorter and shorter. These systems have to survive long-term operation in a harsh environment, where humidity, vibration and, most of all, high temperatures affect reliability. Additionally, temperature and lifetime requirements are increasing.
The current development time for electronic control units is about 2-3 years. One reason for this long period is the qualification time, by today it takes about 6 months. Due to the demand for extended warranty, and a call for decreasing development time of automotive electronics new approaches and methods are required to decrease qualification time. Understanding of failure mechanism is one essential topic for questions regarding accelerated test methods, lifetime prediction and decreasing testing time.
Thus actions are needed for covering these challenges for the establishment of overlapping test and reliability strategies for system-, ECU-, board- and component level. Therefore one vision could be a global networking between suppliers and OEM in automotive industry to go one step in the "virtual qualification"-direction.