7 - Failure analysis

Humidity chamber can produce a highly corrosive environment with elevated temperature, high relative humidity (RH) and voltage bias or current load. The extreme environmental parameters cause higher failure rate in the test samples.

During the thermal shock test materials, components or modules are repeatedly exposed to sudden changes of temperature. MIL or similar standards are commonly used as the basis for thermal shock testing. The diagram above shows an example for temperature cycling from MIL-STD-883E.

Using the HAST chamber it is possible to produce a highly corrosive enviroment with elevated temperature, 100% relative humidity (RH) and high (1-3 bar) overpressure. The extreme enviromental parameters cause a high failure-rate in the test samples. An acceleration factor of about 2000 can be reached. Acceleration factor is the relation between the normal and test values of MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure).