Thermal cycling of THT-PCBAs
- 02 / 09 / 2025
How do you simulate the reliability of through-hole PCB assemblies under thermal stress?
In our project 'Modelling the reliability of through-hole-technology assemblies' funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) we are tackling exactly this challenge.
By combining hex-dominant meshing of the entire PCBA and a temperature-dependent orthotropic material-field that includes the PCB layout we can simulate thermal cycling efficiently for a global PCBA model.
On top of that, we are developing tools for the automatic generation of local sub-models for through-hole devices. These will allow us to calculate visco-plastic solder strains with a global–local simulation approach – combining accuracy with efficiency.
Our goal: provide more reliable methods to predict and improve the lifetime of space electronics.
The animation shows a scaled thermal cycle for an exemplary THT-PCBA (a demo file from KiCad licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0). The colormap shows the mechanical strain (absolute maximum principal) at the PCB surface.
Video: Thermal cycling of an exemplary THT-PCBA.
