1 - PURPOSE

This information note aims to illustrate the effect of overvoltages on the failure rate of electronic components and systems.

2 - INTRODUCTION

The reliability of electronic components and manufacturing processes has allowed achieving very high levels of reliability for electronic devices and systems in a few years.

It has become quite common for both active and passive components to talk about 6s processes, with a failure rate of 3.4ppm or better.

Despite these technological and production improvements, the devices and systems introduced on the market do not always correspond to a similarly reduced failure rate.

This aspect is particularly important and delicate not only for the continuity of service, which is vital in some sectors, but also for the ordinary and extraordinary maintenance activities of sites, for the management and logistic allocation of spare parts, and more generally for the control of the plant status.

Without going into the details of the criteria and methods for robust design, the following will be presented:

• The parameters that improve the reliability of electronic devices and systems;
• The information provided by reliability prediction methods;
• How transient overvoltages are treated in reliability prediction models;
• The effect of overvoltages on the failure rate of electronic systems with some practical references.