Structural Integrity of Electronic Devices With continued miniaturisation and the advent of Surface Mount Technology, the requirement for mechanical structural integrity of electronic devices is becoming increasingly important. It is essential to demonstrate reliability in performance. While empirical thermal cycling of boards has its place in the short term, the results are highly specfic to particular board configurations and temperature profiles. The real goal is to be able to design boards, which meet their performance requirements, from the outset, and so eliminate the costly and time consuming testing. This task is equivalent to, and just as challenging as any in high temperarure structural design, such as power generation or aerospace. It would best be undertaken in a spirit of global collaboration. Through the auspices of The European Structural Integrity Society ( ESIS), I would like to establish a Subcommittee of that organisation to focus upon this problem specifically. I firmly believe that two major benefits would result 1. Greater cohesion amongst the workers already active in the field who are thinly spread throughout Europe, and 2. Attraction of other experts in structural integrity who might cross fertilise and simulate applications in the electronics arena. My tentative defintion of structural integrity in this context includes Mechanical behaviour - tensile, shear, creep , fatigue, thermal fatigue, thermomechanical fatigue. Microstrucural effects - coarsening, voiding, cracking etc Analysis - modelling of these events. FEA, constitutive equations, Design and life prediction. In fact, anything that relates to monitoring, modelling and predicting performance. I would be very pleased to hear from anyone interested in such an activity. Personally, I believe that it is highly appropriate that the electronics community should take steps now to anticipate this growing challenge and tackle it more profesionally. Please contact me if you would like to be involve or you have any queries. Bill Plumbridge ( Professor of Materials Engineering, The Open University, UK ) ############################################################## TechNet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c ############################################################## To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TECHNET <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TECHNET ############################################################## Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information. If you need assistance - contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ##############################################################