Reliability Enhancement Test of a single board computer

Abstract

Reliability Enhancement Test (RET) mainly uses stress which is much larger than actual environmental stress to expose potential defects of products fast and effectively. Failure mode analysis, failure mechanism analysis method and improvement measures will be taken after the test to eliminate defects, and to improve the product's reliability. Based on Physics of Failure (PoF) theory, which regards fault or failure as the main research object, RET can be used to find ultimate stress for products, analyze the changes of the performance indexes and identify products' weak links and sensitive stresses within limited funds and test time. It can also provide some information for PHM such as monitoring positions and parameters. This paper introduces how we implemented RET on a single board computer in detail, the procedure includes stress analysis, designing test program, determination of the monitoring parameters, data collection and analysis. Results show that monitoring parameters of the reset chip, voltage converter and FLASH chip of the single board computer obviously change during the RET of temperature. Especially, Output of voltage converter is very sensitive to high temperature stress, and the change trend becomes more and more obvious with the change of temperature. Output signal of an IC chip, whose function is temperature sensor, becomes abnormal at 125°C. Therefore, in the implementation process of PHM reliability level of sensors must be higher than devices they monitored. All of output parameters are sensitive to random vibration.