Damage mechanics characterization on fatigue behavior of a solder joint material

This paper presents the first part of a comprehensive mechanics approach capable of predicting the integrity and reliability of solder joint material under fatigue loading without viscoplastic damage considerations. A separate report will be made to present a comprehensive damage model describing life prediction of the solder material under thermomechanical fatigue loading. The method is based on a theory of damage mechanics which makes possible a macroscopic description of the successive material deterioration caused by the presence of microcracks/voids in engineering materials. A damage mechanics model based on the thermodynamic theory of irreversible processes with internal state variables is proposed and used to provide a unified approach in characterizing the cyclic behavior of a typical solder material. With the introduction of a damage effect tensor, the constitutive equations are derived to enable the formulation of a fatigue damage dissipative potential function and a fatigue damage criterion. The fatigue evolution is subsequently developed based on the hypothesis that the overall damage is induced by the accumulation of fatigue and plastic damage. This damage mechanics approach offers a systematic and versatile means that is effective in modeling the entire process of material failure ranging from damage initiation and propagation leading eventually to macro-crack initiation and growth. As the model takes into account the load history effect and the interaction between plasticity damage and fatigue damage, with the aid of a modified general purpose finite element program, the method can readily be applied to estimate the fatigue life of solder joints under different loading conditions.