Abstract
MIL-HDBK-217 has played a pivotal role in reliability prediction of electronic equipments for more than 30 years. Recently, RIAC developed a new methodology $217Plus^{TM}$which officially replaces MIL-HDBK-217. Sensitivity analysis of the 217Plus component models to various parameters has been performed and meaningful observations have been drawn in this study. We first briefly reviewed the $217Plus^{TM}$ methodolog and compared it with the conventional model, MIL-HDBK-217. We then performed sensitivity analysis $217Plus^{TM}$ component models to various parameters. Based on the six parameters and an orthogonal array selected, we have performed indepth analyses concerning parameter effects on the model. Our result indicates that, among various parameters, operating temperature and temperature rise during operation have the most significant impacts on the life of a component, and thus a design robust to high temperature is the most importantly required. Next, year of manufacture, duty cycle, and voltage stress are weaker but may be significant when they are in heavy load conditions. Although our study is restricted to a specific type of diodes, the results are still valid to other cases. The results in this study not only figure out the behavior of the predicted failure rate as a function of parameters but provide meaningful guidelines for practical applications.
