Reliability Physics and Engineering (eBook)

This book provides the basic Reliability Physics and Engineering tools that are needed by Electrical Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Materials Scientists, and Applied Physicists to build better products. The material includes information for engineers to develop better methodologies for producing reliable product designs and materials selections to improve product reliability. Important statistical training and tools are contained within the text. The author emphasizes the physics of failure and the development of reliability engineering models for failure.

The beginning of the book concentrates on device/materials degradation and the development of the critically important time-to-failure models. Since time-to-failure is a statistical process, the needed statistical tools are presented next along with failure-rate modeling. Following that the use of accelerated testing and the modeling of the acceleration factors are presented. The next section focuses on the effective use of these acceleration factors, during initial product-level testing and operation, in order to reduce the expected device failure rate in the field. The important time-to-failure models are presented next for Electrical Engineering applications. Likewise, the next section addresses important time-to-failure models for Mechanical Engineering applications. The final chapters provide both Electrical and Mechanical Engineers with design help specifically, conversion of dynamic/transient stresses into equivalent static forms, establishing aggressive but safe design rules, and the need to look very closely at design and process interactions.

Dr. J.W. McPherson is a Texas Instruments Senior Fellow Emeritus and an IEEE Fellow. He has published approximately 200 papers on Reliability Physics and Engineering, written Reliability Chapters in four books, holds 12 patents and was a past General Chair of the International Reliability Physics Symposium. McPherson's broad reliability experience, with both electrical and mechanical failure mechanisms, makes him ideally suited to author a general textbook on Reliability Physics and Engineering.

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All engineers could bene?t from at least one course in reliability physics and engineering. It is very likely that, starting with your very ?rst engineering po- tion, you will be asked - how long is your newly developed device expected to last? This text was designed to help you to answer this fundamentally important question. All materials and devices are expected to degrade with time, so it is very natural to ask - how long will the product last? The evidence for material/device degradation is apparently everywhere in nature. A fresh coating of paint on a house will eventually crack and peel. Doors in a new home can become stuck due to the shifting of the foundation. The new ?nish on an automobile will oxidize with time. The tight tolerances associated with ?nely meshed gears will deteriorate with time. Critical parameters associated with hi- precision semiconductor devices (threshold voltages, drive currents, interconnect resistances, capacitor leakages, etc.) will degrade with time. In order to und- stand the lifetime of the material/device, it is important to understand the reliability physics (kinetics) for each of the potential failure mechanisms and then be able to develop the required reliability engineering methods that can be used to prevent, or at least minimize the occurrence of, device failure.