Vibration Response Prediction of the Printed Circuit Boards Using Experimentally Validated Finite Element Model.

A spacecraft consists of a number of mechanical and electronic sub-assemblies. An electronic package is consists of printed circuit boards placed in mechanical housings which are stacked together. Electronic components are mounted on the printed circuit board (PCB). A spacecraft experiences various types of mechanical loads during its launch such as vibration, acoustic and shock loads. The understanding of dynamic behaviour provides valuable insight to a design engineer, to improve the mechanical design and product reliability when used in harsh vibration condition. Generally electronic package design for vibration loads is verified by conducting tests on actual hardware. This paper addresses on using basic FEA tool to accurately investigate the dynamic characteristics of the PCB and avoid costly testing methods which require hardware. Here the normal modes & frequency response functions (FRF) of PCB are determined and validated using vibration test on PCB. The validated model is used to predict vibration response for random vibration input. It is shown here how the responses are accurately predicted for random vibration input for a design parameter variation of PCB. The results are also validated using vibration test on PCB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]