A novel thermomechanics-based lifetime prediction model for cycle fatigue failure mechanisms in power semiconductors

In this paper, we propose different procedures to extract the statistical distribution of the thermal cycles suffered by power devices submitted to arbitrary mission profiles and we discuss the different lifetimes predicted by them under the assumption of linear accumulation of the damage produced by low cycling fatigue. Furthermore, we introduce a novel prediction procedure, which is based on some fundamental equations, which take into consideration the creep experienced by compliant materials when they are submitted to thermal cycles. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.