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The Physics-of-Failure approach in reliability engineering

Conference Paper · July 2008

DOI: 10.1109/ITI.2008.4588504 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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 The Physics-of-Failure Approach in Reliability Engineering

Zoran Matiü, Vlado Sruk

Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb
Unska 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
zoran.mtch@yahoo.com; vlado.sruk@fer.hr

Abstract. In today’s world, apart from the fact
that systems and products are becoming
increasingly complex, electronic technology is
rapidly progressing in both miniaturization and
higher complexity. Consequently, these facts are
accompanied with new failures modes.
Standard reliability tools cope to tackle all of
the new emerging challenges. New technology
and designs require adapted approaches to
ensure that the products cost-effectively and
timely meet desired reliability goals. The
Physics-of-Failure (P-o-F) represents one
approach to reliability assessment based on
modeling and simulation that relies on
understanding the physical processes
contributing to the appearance of the critical
failures.
This paper outlines the classical approaches
to reliability engineering and discusses
advantages of the Physics-of-Failure approach.
It also stresses that the P-o-F approach should
be probabilistic in order to include inevitable
variations of variables involved in processes
contributing to the occurrence of failures in the
analysis.
Keywords. Reliability prediction, Physics-of-
Failure, Probabilistic Physics-of-Failure
1. Introduction
It can be said that reliability prediction has
been rarely made with notable accuracy. The
prediction inaccuracy in reliability engineering is
often a consequence of neglecting the significant
factors affecting the heart of the reliability itself.
In the last 30 years, we witnessed an
increased systematic attention to revive the
reliability prediction concept conceived in the
very beginning of the 1960s, which sets a
relationship between environmental/operational
factors and components’ life expectation. The
reliability of an item is defined as the probability
that it will perform its intended function for a
stated period of time in intended use
environment. This concept, therefore, focuses on
the pair of reliability definition’s key words:
“time” and “environment;” the concept,
sometimes called Reliability Physics, is known
as Physics-of-Failure approach.
In short, the P-o-F concept explains why and
when components fail. As a result, the concept
surfaces those failure models that can carry
failure mode characterization. The dominant
conceptual failure model in the P-o-F framework
has been the Damage-Endurance Model which
embodies the paradigm that an applied stress
cumulates damage in components, and when
damage exceeds endurance the corresponding
critical failure occurs.
In the field of electronics, the Physics-of-
Failure approach was not established early either
as a standard for predicting life or for assessing
reliability of components. Because of relative
inexpensiveness of electronic components,
reliability programs have relied on statistical
analyses employed late in the development cycle.
In order to make a reliability prediction early in
the development cycle, the statistics of a
tremendous amount of data collected in
corresponding fields through governmental and
industry support were used. As the result, various
standards that represent the classical approach
for predicting the life of components were
established. Due to both diverse applications and
significant variations in environments, the
assumption of constant failure rate became the
foundation of the classical approach. As a
consequence of assuming constant failure rate,
the classical approach does not answer to newer
demands and can represent a high burden to
those projects where it is applied.
In electronics, two main factors drive
application of more accurate reliability approach:
1) rapid technological progress, and 2) market
competitiveness. Electronic technology is rapidly

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Proceedings of the ITI 2008 30 Int. Conf. on Information Technology Interfaces, June 23-26, 2008, Cavtat, Croatia
progressing in both miniaturization and higher
complexity. Consequently, these newer facts are
accompanied with new failures modes. The new
failure modes are results of not only higher
stress-strength ratios due to miniaturization but
also new materials and new manufacturing
processes. On the other hand, companies have to
respond to competitive market requirements of
reducing development cycle and cost while
producing more reliable products for a wider
spectrum of environments. These requirements
call for novel reliability methodologies for
predicting or assessing reliability of components
as accurately as possible in up-front activities
within development processes. These facts
require from reliability engineers acquisition of
deep knowledge concerning both critical failure
mechanisms, that are specific to products they
are working on, and dependency of those
mechanisms to the market’s targeted
environment.
The existence of two approaches split the
reliability community into three groups:
1) advocates of the classical reliability approach;
2) advocates of the Physics-of-Failure approach;
and 3) those unbiased who see both approaches
applicable during the development process.
While the first two groups are characterized by
highlighting either practicality or validity as the
criteria for mutual exclusive use of these
approaches, the third group is best portrayed by
the saying: “always use the available knowledge
you have to help predict the future” – see an
example for recalibration for classical
predictions in [9]. Evans argues that due to ever-
present uncertainty the first two groups are “not
realistic about what we know, and/or we do not
know, about the real world” [3].
2. Need for an Effective Approach in
Reliability Prediction
In the 1980s, some researchers and engineers
had questioned the accuracy of the Mil-Hdbk-
217 in predicting reliability - the Mil-Hdbk-217
was the epitome of classical prediction
methodology in electronics; soon, the need for
another approach was conceived. Debates in
many conferences and published questionings [6,
10, 13] of the appropriateness of applying the
procedures based on the classical concept have
contributed to maturing-up the necessity for
another approach that overcomes the ignorance
previously exposed through the usage of the
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classical reliability methodologies that do not
acknowledge design and manufacturing
improvements. A more realistic approach was
searched as the adequate replacement.
It can be noted that reliability engineering
authorities took a side in 1990s. As an example,
a reliability authority, Patrick D.T. O’Connor,
expressed his conviction to reliability
communities, “I think the only balanced view is
to say that Mil-Hdbk-217 and anything like it is
the biggest load of garbage ever to be foisted by
engineers on other engineers and should
immediately be done away with” [14].
A very short article [10] having the direct
question as the article’s title: “Is It Time for A
New Approach?” questioned the appropriateness
of a reliability prediction concept contained in
MIL-HDBK-217. The author pointed out that
MTBF is “a trap for the unwary and as a concept
it is misunderstood by the majority of
customers.” He disregarded the concept by
claiming the “pseudo-statistics” behind it. The
author highlighted that reliability belongs to
engineering and the new approach must be a part
of design integrity. Although the article neither
answered the raised question nor directly referred
to the P-o-F approach, the P-o-F might be
intuited as the answer to the title’s question
through the article’s stress on the feasibility of a
failure-free period of an item designed against a
specified environment.
Pecht [12] also pointed to the P-o-F concept
as an alternative approach to the classical
approach by listing both the following main
problems that arise from the classical prediction
method and the following reasons of their
existence: out-of-date data needed for the
reliability prediction; difference between
removed and failed parts; distinction between the
design and manufacturing failures; failures due
to overstresses, damages due to incorrect
manipulation with components, usage of
improper parts, etc.; assumption of a constant
failure rate; usage of averaged values that neither
vendor specific nor device specific; inappropriate
modeling; considerable discrepancies in
predictions among the worldwide existing
procedures that follow the classical approach.
Reliability engineering communities in
various countries had different visions on how to
overcome these problems. In Europe the problem
has been seen in total averaging that qualitatively
penalizes those parts that are produced by
utilizing the good quality and reliability
practices. The European response was to work on
establishing a standard based on the classical
approach that distinguishes suppliers’ reliability
practices. In general, this vision means that the
prediction will be based on vendor-component
specifics. From the other side of the world, Japan
has been preferably establishing grounds for the
P-o-F approach. Dominant problems seen by the
Japanese reliability engineering community are
not only in the constant hazard rate assumption
but also in the Arrhenius relation regarding to
averaging effects of various failure mechanisms.
Mil-Hdbk-217, that was previously overused, has
not been updated for over a decade and become
obsolete and does not adequately cover newer
technologies. The previous upgrade of Military
Acquisition Handbook 179, which directed
readers to Mil-Hdbk-217 (Military Acquisition
Handbook 179A [2]) suggested the use of
general “positive reliability practices”, and
among those practices listed the P-o-F approach.
3. Comparison between P-o-F and
Classical Approaches
Several comparisons with Mil-Hdbk-217
have been published in both quantitative and
qualitative domains. From those papers, the three
that are completely dedicated to the comparison
between the P-o-F and classical approaches are
summarized here; these three papers highlighted
prediction inaccuracy and its consequences as
connotation of the classical approach. The first
logical target for the comparison was the
assumption of a constant hazard rate that is the
basic assumption of the classical approach.
Mortin et al [11] made a comparison between
constant hazard rate and hazard rate specific for a
failure mechanism. The electromigration is
considered as an example for the single failure
mechanism of a component. When increasing
hazard rate vs. constant hazard rate is compared,
the significant discrepancy can be observed. The
discrepancy between an assumed constant hazard
rate and the corresponding real hazard rate
penalizes not only the support determined by
logistic and maintenance requirements, which are
based on the assumed hazard rates, but also the
design itself as a result of either over-designing
or under-designing it. As the consequence,
tremendous life-cycle cost could be imposed due
to the incorrect assumption.
747
Another comparison between predicted
constant failure rates and real ones of many
plastic encapsulated parts was done by Weil [15].
By analyzing the test and field data, Weil
showed that when high volume suppliers
employing the best reliability and quality
practices manufactured plastic encapsulated
microcircuits (PEMs), the PEMs had
considerably lower failure rates than the failure
rates predicted by Mil-Hdbk-217. Although the
PEMs were quite qualified for many military and
aerospace applications, their implementation
historically was rejected due to Mil-Hdbk-217's
very strong influence on designers of that time.
Also, Cushing et al [1] provided a descriptive
comparison between the classical and P-o-F
approaches by various issues starting from model
development to final relative cost analysis. This
paper favors the P-o-F approach by targeting a
broader perspective of reliability assessment. The
authors argued that whenever test and field data
are inconsistent with reliability assessments, the
reliability is not well understood, and therefore,
additional analysis is required. The authors
pointed to the ignorance of the classical approach
to the dominant failure mechanism in
determining reliability, while the P-o-F approach
inherently contains reliability analysis of
contributing failure mechanisms.
Further, Foucher et al [4] provided the
comparison between the P-o-F approach and
classical approach which is not based on
subjective characteristics. When the most
significant characteristic are compared, such as
accuracy, ease of customization, traceability, and
ability to evolution, the P-o-F approach is
reported as the more superior approach in
reliability engineering.
These aforementioned comparisons between
the P-o-F approach and the classical approach
distinguish the P-o-F approach as the more
effective reliability approach to be used in
concurrent engineering which involves methods
for both designing-in reliability and performance
improvement.
4. Physics-of-Failure Procedure
The literature review revealed dissimilarities
in P-o-F procedural steps that indicate limitation
in understanding the P-o-F process. By defining
the generic P-o-F procedure, this paper identifies
procedural steps in conducting any P-o-F
analysis and offers uniformity in its applicability.

STEP 1 STEP 2
Environmental
Factors and
Conditions
STEP 4
Environmental
Reliability /Operational
Assessment Factors and
Conditions
Figure 1. The generic P-o-F procedure
The application of the P-o-F approach
contains the four main steps that are illustrated in
Figure 1.
The first step is to determine environmental
factors by specifying or measuring them.
The next crucial step is to isolate potential
failures triads (site, mode, mechanism) – the
failure-triad determining sequence can differ
depending on the available data. This step unifies
the identification of failure sites and site-
corresponding failure modes, and the
determination of mechanisms contributing to a
potential failure mode. This step could benefit
from performing a comparative analysis between
good components and failed components, those
failed either in field environment or in laboratory
environment.
The third step that comes after identifying
failure triads and isolating the potential
mechanisms is to filter contributing
environmental and/or operational factors.
The last step is to find proper functional
dependencies of all stresses and to identify
applicable models. Selected models are required
that have the best fitting for the specified
operational/ environmental conditions - it is also
quite important to determine validity bounds of
the corresponding model. Then, when the proper
equations are known, the life of components for
any given operational/environmental condition
inside its validity is determined.
5. Advantages of the P-o-F Approach in
Reliability Engineering
When the P-o-F approach is applied during
development, it gives many advantages that are
spread throughout the whole development
process. These advantages can be expressed in
different ways depending on the development
perspective, and some of them are as follows:
• Comparing up-front design candidates.
Potential failure modes for a design candidate
Failure that are specific for an intended environment can
Contributing
Mechanisms be analyzed before making a decision whether
the candidate component should be used in a new
design. The ability to compare different design
candidates for supporting a specific requirement
STEP 3 eliminates the possibility of over-designing; thus,
this advantage contributes to cost-effectiveness.
• Identifying up-front design improvements.
While the classical prediction methodology
completely ignores failure modes, the P-o-F
approach does have the potential either to warn
up-front on a need for improvements in design
and manufacturing or to indicate the necessity
for required inspections during operation. As a
result, test-analyze-fix (TAF) cycles inherent to
reliability growth process can be minimized, or
even eliminated. This capability to minimize
TAF cycles positively impacts both on
shortening the time-to-market and on reducing
the development cost. In addition, the P-o-F
approach can be concurrently used in analyzing
how design changes affect reliability.
• Getting realistic predictions. Due to deeper
insights in failures when failure mechanisms are
known, over-optimistic or over-pessimistic
predictions can be minimized - the P-o-F
approach realistically evaluates all elements in
reliability consideration such as new materials,
structures, or technologies. Therefore, the P-o-F
approach can have cost-effective impacts on
maintenance and logistic requirements.
• Estimating the reliability quickly. The P-o-F
approach offers the ability to check or compare
the vendor-claimed reliability for a specified
environment. This ability could eliminate the
need for long lasting qualification testing.
• Determining the life expectancy of
components for different mission profiles. P-o-F
models can predict the life expectancy of a
component for various potential mission profiles.
For example, an electronic component used on
an automotive platform could expose a very
different life distribution than the life distribution
of the same component when it operates on some
other, non-similar platform. Also, due to market
globalization, it is a competitive advantage to
design a reliable system for various
environments.
• Optimizing Environmental Stress Screening
(ESS) / Burn-in parameters. Because P-o-F
models can exercise the existence of different
weak properties that are consequences of either
748
the presence of defects in materials or
inappropriate manufacturing processes, the P-o-F
approach should be used in determining the
optimal number of burn-in/ ESS cycles for
applied profiles and their extreme values. This
optimization is especially important to avoid
unnecessary product aging.
• Identifying a focus of preventive
maintenance and its optimal preventive interval.
Due to environmental variations, the life
distribution of components might considerably
differ; different environments may alter
dominant failure modes, and they may
consequently result in a different maintenance
focus and the corresponding optimal preventive
maintenance interval.
This list is not exhaustive by any means.
From these several listed advantages it can be
inferred that applying the P-o-F approach is
beneficial during the development process for
addressing or identifying proper reliability
concerns, and as a result, it can have significant
impact on shortening the development cycle, on
reducing development cost, or on optimizing
maintenance.
6. Probabilistic Physics-of-Failure
Due to inevitable variations of variables
involved in processes contributing to the
occurrence of failures, the P-o-F approach has to
be probabilistic. The new Probabilistic Physics-
of-Failure (PP-o-F) methodologies should be
developed for assessing the reliability of
components by involving variations that mainly
come from:
• Environmental factors. The variations as a
result of environmental factors are specific not
only for the field environment but also for the
accelerated qualification or demonstration
testing; for example, during temperature cycling
in an environmental chamber, there is always the
discrepancy between the air temperature in the
chamber and the temperature of the components
due to their thermal inertia.
• Mission profiles. The uncertainty of mission
profiles includes both nominal values vs.
extreme values and dynamics in the domain of
environmental factors.
• Manufacturing processes. Manufacturing
processes combine variations in tooling and in
material properties.
A logical, straightforward way of
implementing PP-o-F is to extend the existing
749
P-o-F framework by applying methods for
including variability of either key variables or all
variables - an example is presented in [5, 8].
Besides this straightforward way, another
method for constructing probabilistic P-o-F
models has been developed. This method
proposed to build-in engineering parameters into
prior beliefs. Consequently, predictions made by
this method often require expert knowledge that
itself introduces huge uncertainty. On the other
side, by utilizing the Bayesian approach, this
method also requires failure evidence for
changing the prior beliefs. These requirements
imply that this PP-o-F method is not so
effectively fit in time during the development
process – consequently, the method brings
disadvantages similar to those of the classical
reliability methodology that has been explored
by the reliability engineering community.
Some elements of PP-o-F principles are also
present in the work of Haggag et al [7] who
determined the failure-time distribution of both
deep-submicron MOSFET transistors and optical
interconnects through a common defect
activation distribution.
It can be said that the Probabilistic Physics-
of-Failure approach is relatively in its early
infancy. An effective PP-o-F methodology,
therefore, represents targeted frontier for
reliability scientists – the PP-o-F methodologies
shall bridge the last gap in the reliability
engineering by establishing relationship among
the three key words from the reliability
definitions: probability, time, and environment.
7. Conclusion
There are two approaches to prediction and
assessment in reliability engineering. The
classical way relays on the availability of
extensive component libraries having reliability
measures for similar parts; failure rate prediction
made by this approach often results in inaccurate
reliability prediction and assessment. On the
other hand, the physics-of-failure approach
demonstrates the better accuracy because it is
based both on identifying the critical failure
modes and on estimating the impact of
contributing environmental factors accumulating
damages in the parts that ultimately lead to
failures.
It is important to have in mind that the
classical and P-o-F approaches may be
complementary and both are useful in the
 development of a product or a component. When
utilized early in development, classical approach
to prediction has its complementing value to
P-o-F approach.
Applying the P-o-F approach during the
development process is beneficial for addressing
or identifying proper reliability concerns; as a
result, the physics-of-failure approach can have
significant impact on shortening the development
cycle, on reducing development cost, or on
optimizing maintenance. Therefore, utilizing this
approach has many advantages in development;
however, there is an important, rarely-utilized
aspect of the approach: the probabilistic aspect.
The probabilistic P-o-F is in its infancy;
existing methods can and should be improved.
To make them effective, developing a new
methodology to address more effectively aspects
of the P-o-F's rarely-utilized and missing
dimensions is urgently needed. New
methodologies should rely more on remarkable
computing power which is readily available
nowadays in the engineering development
environment for simulation. Future work in new
probabilistic physics-of-failure methodologies
will improve reliability discipline and will
increase the accuracy of reliability predictions
and assessments throughout the whole
development cycle.
8. References
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