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Solder joints of ball grid arrays (BGA) have been widely used to connect electronic components to printed circuit boards (PCBs) and are often subjected to mechanical stress. Several studies have been conducted on the mechanical reliability of solder joints. While these studies have been useful in the industry, detailed studies on how the inelastic deformation path of the solder ball joints evolves under specific loading conditions have not been sufficiently reported. This study aims to understand how the inelastic deformation path evolves when a solder joint is subjected to a constant external force by utilizing the theory of mechanics. It has also been found that the mechanical failure is strongly influenced by the evolution history of the deformation modes in materials. For this study, an elastoplastic constitutive model and a ductile fracture criterion were implemented into the vectorized user-defined material (VUMAT) subroutine of the ABAQUS program for finite element (FE) analysis. With the model, the evolution of the inelastic deformation path of a single solder ball under different loading conditions was numerically analyzed. Three loadings (shear, compression, and bending) were chosen as the basic loading conditions. In addition, combinations of the basic loadings resulted in three dual loadings and one complex loading. The simulation results showed that the shear and bending caused the fracture for both single and dual loadings, but when combined with compression, the fracture was suppressed. The results indicate that fracture is not solely determined by the magnitude of equivalent plastic strain but also by the evolution of inelastic deformation mode. This research offers an improved understanding of the significance of the inelastic deformation path and fracture.

Computational modeling and simulation are essential to solid and structural mechanics [...]

In this study, a passive truss-link mechanism applicable to large-scale deployable structures was designed to achieve successful deployment in space. First, we simplified the selected truss-link mechanisms to the two-dimensional geometry and calculated the degrees of freedom (DOF) to determine whether a kinematic over-constraint occurs. The dimensions of the truss-link structure were determined through a deployment kinematic analysis. Second, a deployment simulation with the truss-link was conducted using multibody dynamics (MBD) software. Finally, a deployment test was performed considering gravity compensation, and the results were compared with those of MBD simulation. The results of the deployment simulations were confirmed to be slightly faster than those of the deployment test due to friction effects existing in the joints and gravity compensation devices. To address this issue, inverse identification of the equivalent frictional torque (EFT) at the revolute joints in the deployment test was conducted through response surface methods (RSM) combined with the central composite design technique. As a result, we confirmed that the deployment angle history of the deployment simulation was similar to that of the deployment test.

In this work, experimental and numerical investigation on the deployment of solar panels with tape spring (TS) hinges showing complex nonlinear hysteresis behavior caused by the snap-through buckling was conducted. Subsequently, it was verified by comparing simulation results by multi-body dynamics (MBD) analysis with test results on ground-based deployment testing considering gravity compensation, termed zero-gravity (Zero-G) device. It has been difficult to predict the folding and unfolding behavior of TS hinges because their moment–rotation relationship showed a nonlinear hysteresis behavior. To realize this attribute, an algorithm that checks the sign of angular velocity of the revolute joints was used to distinguish folding from unfolding. The nonlinear hysteresis was implemented in terms of two path-dependent nonlinear moment–rotation curves with the aid of the expression function (a kind of user subroutine) in MBD software RecurDyn. Finally, it was found that the results of the deployment analysis were in excellent agreement with those of the test when the friction torques of the revolute joints were properly identified by an inverse analysis with the test frames, thus validating the MBD model.

In this work, we generated a set of random representative volume elements (RVEs) of unidirectional composites considering actual noncircular cross-sections and positions of fibers with the aid of a shape-library approach. The cross-section of the noncircular carbon fiber was extracted from the M55J/M18 composite using image processing and a signed-distance-based mesh trimming scheme, and they were stored in a particle-shape library. The obtained noncircular fibers randomly chosen from the particle-shape library were applied to random fiber array generation algorithms to generate RVEs of various fiber volume fractions. To check the randomness of the proposed RVEs, we calculated spatial and physical metrics, and concluded that the proposed method is sufficiently random. Furthermore, to compare the effective elastic properties and the maximum von Mises stress in the matrix, it was applied to composite materials with different relative ratios of elastic moduli of M55J/M18 and T300/PR319. In the case of T300/PR319 having a high RRT (relative ratio of the transverse elastic moduli), simulation results were deviated up to about 5% in the effective elastic properties and 13% in the maximum von Mises stress in the matrix according to the fiber shapes.