A Unified Viscoplastic Fatigue Damage Model for 63Sn-37Pb Solder Alloy Under Cyclic Stress Control

A damage coupling viscoplastic model is developed to predict fatigue life of solder alloy 63Sn-37Pb under stress control. The viscoplastic flow rule chosen employs a hyperbolic sine function. A damage evolution equation is formulated based on three distinct material deformation behaviors: (i) stress rate independent damage evolution; (ii) stress rate dependent cyclic damage evolution; and (iii) stress rate dependent ductile damage evolution. The cyclic stress testing with different stress waveforms was first conducted to investigate their progressive viscoplastic deformations of the solder alloy. The investigation reveals that the material constants used in the model can be adequately determined from the results of standard creep tests. The constitutive model is validated by comparing the predicted and measured ratchetting results of the solder alloy under different forms of stress cycling. The proposed model is found to be capable of satisfactorily describing the viscoplastic deformation and ratchetting failure behaviors of the solder alloy under the conditions of the cyclic stress loading.