Introduction
Sherlock is a powerful tool for predicting electronics reliability under a variety of different loading conditions. We can import circuit boards with their components into Sherlock, and apply various environmental conditions and get a lifetime prediction for each individual component.
The standard workflow for Sherlock does not consider the impacts of the enclosure on the PCB. This blog shows how we can integrate Sherlock with Ansys Mechanical using the workbench interface to evaluate the impacts of enclosures or other structures on the reliability of the target PCB.
Workbench
There are multiple ways to start out. In Workbench, you can use the Sherlock (Pre) component system and open Sherlock from there. You can then import your ODB++ file and do any preprocessing work for the PCB model here.
If you have a completed Sherlock model you would like to add an enclosure to, you can also export the model from within Sherlock as a zip file. Then you can import that zip file to the Sherlock (Pre) component and use that in the model.
Within the sherlock model, set up the environmental events and lifecycle as you would a standard analysis. This is required for us to extract the results at the end.
We also need to set the Export Type to FEA Analysis and the Analysis Type to whichever analysis you are looking to do. We can connect the Setup output to the geometry and mesh input of a Mechanical Model. This brings the PCB with its components into Mechanical.
Mechanical Models
Mechanical models components allow us to mesh and assemble various geometries. We need to set up the enclosure geometry in a separate mechanical model. Then, we can combine the PCB and enclosure models into a single mechanical model and apply transforms if needed to align the PCB and enclosure, and set up contacts.
Simulation
We can then connect the mechanical model to our different types of analyses, including harmonic, random vibration, or thermal strain.
Afterwards, we connect a sherlock post block to the sherlock pre block. We then connect the solution of the analysis systems to the sherlock post block. After we update the Sherlock post block, we can look at the results.
Conclusions
Ansys Mechanical and Sherlock are powerful tools that we can use to analyze PCBs and evaluate their reliability and lifespans. We can use the Sherlock Workbench integration to improve our electronic reliability workflow, and analyze the effects of enclosures and other mounting structures on the lifespan of our PCB.
Additional Resources
