MR-12149; No of Pages 5

Microelectronics Reliability xxx (2016) xxxxxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Microelectronics Reliability

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mr

Requirements for the application of ECUs in e-mobility originally qualied for

gasoline cars
M. Krger a,, S. Straube a, A. Middendorf b, D. Hahn b, T. Dobs b, K.-D. Lang a
a
Technische Universitt Berlin, Germany
b
Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration, Berlin, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Electronic control units (ECUs) are widely spread over the automotive industry with lots of applications. At this
Received 11 July 2016 time more than 100 ECUs are used in a medium-sized vehicle. Development, test and qualication of ECUs are
Accepted 12 July 2016 time and cost extensive. That is why they are often used in more than one generation and more than one
Available online xxxx
model of vehicles. Present ECUs are developed and qualied for vehicles with combustion engines. Since the in-
troduction of hybrid and fully electrical cars the requirements on the ECUs changed drastically. With respect to
Keywords:
Qualication
the engine ECUs temperature maxima is lower. On the other hand due to charging the batteries and other con-
Automotive tinuous voltage stresses, the time of operation (active and passive) is massively growing. The central question
Reliability is: Is it possible to use ECUs qualied for gasoline car in electric cars without any reliability risks?
Mission prole To answer this question we start with a comparison of mission proles of electrical cars and combustion engine
cars. Based on the mission proles we show the different requirements on the electronics robustness and use
time. Afterwards we investigate the qualication process of an exemplary ECU from a combustion engine car
and identify differences in comparison to the hybrid and fully electrical variant. As an example, a measurement
of temperatures in a car driven under reasonably realistic conditions indicates the inuence of the combustion
engine on the thermal behaviour of the electronics as a key driver for failures. We provide a generic procedure
that can be used for the design of future ECUs and compare it with expected temperature distributions in electric
cars. Based on our results recommendations for the applicability of the use of existing ECUs in electric cars are
discussed.
2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction Load conditions can be classied corresponding to their physical pa-

The most failures in today's automobiles are caused by electronic
equipment. In the year 2012 the German automotive society ADAC pub-
lished the following Fig. 1. It shows that the proportion of electronic fail-
ures in an automobile reached 44% and has for this reason the highest
percentage on the total amount of failures in an automobile [1]. De-
pending on different sources these numbers vary around 50% with ris-
ing tendency [2].
Electronic control units (ECUs) and electronic components can be
found in different mounting places all over an automobile with different
complexities for different applications. Typical mounting places can be
dened (see Table 1) and a rough estimation can be made for loads ap-
plied to ECUs at their mounting place. Examples could be that a maxi-
mum temperature of about 100 C in the roof of the automobile can
be reached or splash water (even with salt as a dilution) at the
underside.
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Michael.Krueger@becap.tu-berlin.de (M. Krger).
rameters. Driving forces for failures in electronics may be temperature,
vibration, humidity, dust and any combination of them. One main driv-
ing force is the temperature (and temperature cycling respectively).
Fig. 2 shows the result of a study according to which the temperature
is responsible for more than half of the failures in electronics.
Knowing the maximum and average temperatures of certain mount-
ing places in a complex system like an automobile is essential to ensure
lifetimes for mounted electronic parts at these places. The following list
presents an extended list of mounting places dened in [4].
Typical loads are expected for certain mounting places and automo-
tive standards require specic tests for components placed in certain
places. To date, concepts for electric vehicles do not induce major
changes regarding mounting places, because the overall concept of
how an automobile has to look like didn't change. Of course, on the in-
side major changes have been made, especially with only battery
powered vehicles (BEVs). The most concepts of BEV prefer large battery
packs on the inside of the underbody and trunk of the vehicle and an
electric engine in place of the combustion engine, usually smaller
though. Concepts for all-wheel drive seem to rather add an additional
engine at the back than a powertrain. A wheel hub motor might be an

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2016.07.126
0026-2714/ 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Please cite this article as: M. Krger, et al., Requirements for the application of ECUs in e-mobility originally qualied for gasoline cars, Microelec-
tronics Reliability (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2016.07.126
2 M. Krger et al. / Microelectronics Reliability xxx (2016) xxxxxx

Fig. 1. Distribution of failures in the automotive industry [1].

option in some concepts. The most signicant changes for BEVs regard-
ing mounting place are the powertrain, gearbox and exhaust system
that are no longer necessary. The lowered thermal load inside the en-
gine compartment due to the lower power dissipation of the electrical Fig. 2. Inuences on failures in electronic systems [3].
drive compared to the combustion engine is another major change in
typical loads for mounting places. Also electric elding gearboxes (gear-
boxes that are developed for electrical drive) will be able to optimize the load conditions have changed. Presently ECUs are developed and quali-
efciency by converting revolutions per minute and moment of torque. ed for vehicles with combustion engines. The common standard of
These changes imply different load and aging conditions for ECUs inside German OEMs for electric and electronic components (LV124 [5]) de-
an automobile. In this paper some of the main changes in loads and nec- nes some lifetime requirements, like 15 a lifetime, 8.000 h active oper-
essary differences in qualication tests for electronic parts (especially ation or 300.000 km kilometric performance. Tests are designed around
ECUs) in fully electric cars and automobiles with combustion engine these requirements for vehicles with combustion engine. So far only the
are discussed. estimated operation state is tested, post heating is neglected. For electri-
cal and hybrid vehicles powered by batteries additional requirements
for different operation modes (e.g. charging, preconditioning, on-Grid
2. Qualication of ECUs parking) are necessary and only named in the latest version of the
LV124. Therefore specic conditions have yet to be dened. A study of
Development, test and qualication of ECUs are time and cost exten- the German Research Centre for Air and Space Travel (DLR) about
sive. Depending on the type of development (evolutionary or new prod- early adopters of electric vehicles in Germany [7] shows that use scenar-
uct development) it takes up to 60 months until start of production ios are only restricted to maximum range. In an everyday scenario elec-
(SOP). Several samples are developed on the basis of known failures of tric vehicles can completely replace fuel driven vehicles. Typical
present ECUs (failure analysis) and on mission proles or specication operational proles developed in [4] still seem to be applicable to such
sheets. In the eld of hybrid and fully electrical cars (including plug-in scenarios. Since no major changes happen in the use-case, most major
hybrid cars) the functional requirements and external and internal changes for requirements for ECUs come from the concept of electric ve-
hicles itself. Without combustion engine, the maximum operation tem-
perature inside the engine compartment can be expected to be lower
Table 1
than before. Certain ECUs and components, like power electronic unit
Categorized mounting places for ECUs in an automobile (partly derived from [5]).
or engine, can still reach high temperatures at localised spots. New re-
No. Mounting place Max. quirements arise due to charging cycles for involved ECUs. Another as-
temperature pect that has to be considered, is that the absence of high temperature
(C)
in the engine compartment also reduces the drying effect. This could
1 Front inside 135 mean that humidity becomes a more relevant load over lifetime [8].
2 Front outside 90
3 Engine compartment 140
4 Engine and gearbox mounting 155 3. Mission prole for use in automotive environment
5 Plenum chamber (location between windshield and engine 90
hood) Considering the changes from a combustion engine driven vehicle to
6 Interface 90
a battery driven vehicle, it should be decided whether the actual meth-
7 Door inside 100
8 Door outside 90
od of qualication is sufcient or not. ECUs that are not operating within
9 Interior 90 the inuence range of the thermal losses of the combustion engine
10 Headliner (roof inside) 105 should not see any change in requirement when placed in electric vehi-
11 Chassis 90 cles. ECUs within the range of the combustion engine losses, but not
12 Outer parts chassis, attachments, front and rear (with 90
close to major heat sources within an electric vehicle, might be even
lids)
13 Outer parts roof 90 over-qualied with regard to temperature loads depending on the ther-
14 Underbody inside mal losses of the electrical powertrain. On the other hand heat sources
15 Underbody outside like the power electronic units of an electric vehicle might not be qual-
16 Powertrain 190 ied sufciently without regard to additional active operation time (e.g.
17 Exhaust system up to 1100
charging). As shown in [7], typical use scenarios are numerous, as long

Please cite this article as: M. Krger, et al., Requirements for the application of ECUs in e-mobility originally qualied for gasoline cars, Microelec-
tronics Reliability (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2016.07.126
 M. Krger et al. / Microelectronics Reliability xxx (2016) xxxxxx
as battery charge is sufcient. Daily use to commute to work and back is
dominant, with additional trips for various activities up to every three
days each. In [4] a scenario called family vehicle was used to describe
such use case. Also peaks for charging times in the morning and evening
with a remaining mean battery capacity of 32% are shown. From a de-
veloping point of view this allows for a scenario of going to work charg-
ing back up, then doing different activities and charging in the evening
at home again. Is this scenario repeated ve times a week for 15 years,
then a time distribution regarding the operating state results as
shown in Table 2.
Balancing refers to the time/operation mode in which the battery
cells are equalised in charge. It usually is dened as 10% of the charging
time. On-Grid-parking mode includes back-charging into the power dis-
tribution net for stable operation. Off-Grid-parking takes the same time
as the driving mode does in this example. Based on such information
and the temperature loads during these states it is possible to derive ac-
celerated test scenarios. Since detailed and standardised information on
temperature distribution is not yet publicly available a rough estimation
has to be made. A combustion engine has an efciency of 2030%, about
4050% of the losses are said to be dissipated through the exhaust, leav-
ing about 2030% losses dissipated into the engine compartment. As-
suming an efciency of 8090% for an electric drive, this could lead to
about 10% less losses for an electrical vehicle within the engine com-
partment, if performance characteristics are the same. Transferring
these 10% onto the temperature, leads to an engine compartment
about 10 C cooler but with much higher operating times e.g. on-Grid-
parking with electronics in active or semi-active mode.
4. Temperature dependent failures in an automobile
For modelling different loading scenarios it is important to know,
which temperatures can be found at different mounting places in an au-
tomobile, according to Table 1. Therefore a car with combustion engine
was equipped with sensors and driven under meaningful conditions
that differ from the conditions on a test stand. One sensor measures
the air temperature outside on the roof of the car, the second sensor
measures the temperature inside the box where electronic units are
mounted (Ebox) and the third sensor measures the temperature at
the point where the air intake for the combustion engine is located.
This test data can be used for modelling the degradation of the electron-
ics under use conditions even for hybrid and electric cars.
Three sensors measure the temperature of the environment, the in-
take air and the air in the region of the mounting place of the ECUs. In
this case, mounting place 5, according to Table 1, was measured. The
road-test route has a length of 36.8 km. The operating temperature of
the engine reached 90 C and the course includes parts of autobahn,
countryside highways and city roads. The maximum speed did not ex-
ceed 130 km/h. Fig. 3 shows the temperature distribution over time.
The time until the maximum temperature of the environment reached
corresponds to the driving time since the test started in an underground
garage. Afterwards the temperature drops down to its initial value. The
measured data can be classied into four parts. Part one (P1) shows the
heating up phase during driving, P2 shows the post heating, P3 a section
with nearly constant temperature (here heating and cooling have equal
Table 2
Distribution of operating states for a family vehicle.
State Family vehicle
Driving 6250 h
Charging 23,438 h
Balancing 2344 h
OnGridparing 51,719 h
OffGridparking 6250 h
Please cite this article as: M. Krger, et al., Requirements for the application of ECUs in e-mobility originally qualied for gasoline cars, Microelec-
tronics Reliability (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2016.07.126
3
Fig. 3. Measured temperatures in a car.
values, this is corresponding the on-stage of the automobile) and P4 is
the cooling time.
P1 starts with stopped engine in an underground garage. This phase
can be modelled as a linear function, expressing a kind of worst case sce-
nario. It takes about 53 min until phase P2 starts. This phase shows the
independence of the temperature in the engine mounting place (intake
air) and plenum chamber where the ECU is mounted. P2 starts after the
engine has stopped again. The measurement shows a phase with rising
temperature as one may expect, due to preheating of the engine. P3
shows a short phase with heating and cooling in equilibrium. It is de-
ned according to a constant behaviour of the temperature inside the
box where electronic units are mounted. This phase stops when the
temperature begins to go down. Here, P4 shows the passive cooling
phase until the temperature reaches the temperature of the environ-
ment again. This phase takes up to 24 h.
Table 3 shows the calculated temperature collective out of a used
ECU with 1200 h operating time. Here, weather data from the location
where the test car was used and the operating times and dates are
used to calculate a temperature distribution. The investigated ECU was
only used 1200 h before it was analysed destructively.
Mean temperature lies in the region of 1015 C while the maximum
temperatures are not often present. These temperatures are calculated
with data from the drivers log, measured data and environmental tem-
peratures during the test time.
5. Differences in loads and failure mechanisms between fully electri-
cal and classical automobile
In an automobile with combustion engine the temperature of the
engine leads to temperature rises during operation in the environment
of the engine itself. Every ECU, which is mounted in this region (com-
pare Table 1: 1, 3, 4, 17) suffers among other things from cyclic temper-
ature change that cause e.g. creep and leads to failures especially in the
electrical interconnections inside the ECUs due to mismatch of coef-
cients of thermal expansion (CTE). Additionally, the higher tempera-
tures lead to drying of the surfaces and ECUs outside and if moisture
can ingress to inner structures too. Often ECUs are lled up with silicone
that does not protect the circuit from humidity [8].
As an example for material behaviour occurring mainly due to stand-
by as a temperature driven effect, Fig. 4 shows a comparison between
two solder structures measured via electron backscatter diffraction
(EBSD) analysis.
Compared are two solder interconnections between printed circuit
board (PCB) and a capacitor. The left picture shows the state of the inter-
connection after storing the ECU for several years under low loading
conditions. This ECU was never used in a car. It expresses the initial
state, whereas the right part of Fig. 4 is showing a state after 1200 h of
operating time in a test automobile. The Temperature distribution is
shown in Table 3. Under the assumption of equal initial states, it can
be seen that grains have formed. This usually affects the remaining life-
time negatively because of higher possibility of crack initiation from the
surface. Temperature cycling than is leading to a crack propagation
through the entire cross section of the interconnection, leading to a fail-
ure. It is not possible to determine the point in time when the failure
4 M. Krger et al. / Microelectronics Reliability xxx (2016) xxxxxx

Table 3 A is the acceleration factor, Ea the activation energy for a failure

Surface temperature distribution over the lifetime of an ECU in mounting place 5 (excerpt mechanism, k the Boltzmann-factor, Tuse and Tstress the temperatures
of 1200 h).
during use and stress time and ttest and top the lifetimes of test and oper-
From To Distribution Histogram ation mode. The ratio of times (percentage) under different use condi-
T1 in C T2 in C 100,00% tions, as shown in Table 2, resulting in different temperatures is
expressed by p in Eq. (2). Usually Ea is set to 0.45 eV for unknown failure
20 15 0,07%
mechanisms.
15 10 0,48% The higher temperature reduces the overall lifetime drastically be-
10 5 2,67% cause the expected on-Grid parking time and thereby the stand-by
5 0 7,33% time is expected to be about half of the total lifetime of the automotive.
0 5 16,17% The calculation results in nearly half of the lifetime because of the long
stand-by state at additional 20 K temperature rise caused by 3 W dissi-
5 10 18,64%
pated power.
10 15 21,37%
To answer the question, whether ECUs for electric vehicles can be
15 20 17,22% qualied the same way as ECUs for combustion engine driven cars the
20 25 8,99% thermal load of a mission prole for a family vehicle shall be used as ex-
25 30 4,80% ample. Current automotive standards dene lifetime tests based on a
30 35 2,14% mission prole and the Arrhenius law. A mission prole expresses a
use scenario by dening a set of loading conditions. This mission prole
35 40 0,12%
only includes active operation. Effects like temperature rise after use
due to thermal capacity are not included.
will occur. Therefore a condition monitoring approach has to be used Appling this method on the mission prole for the engine compart-
[10]. ment of a family vehicle will result in a time necessary to test an ECU.
The resulting test time shall be our reference. As already shown, the
6. Modelling of usage scenarios electronic units of an electric vehicle may, depending on function,
have different active operation modes, all of which generate thermal
As mentioned, stand-by power for example after nished charging losses. Assuming the same test time is sufcient for qualication, we
process is leading to higher temperatures. If ECUs are placed into an ad- can calculate the temperature the electronic units is allowed to have
ditional housing the inuence of only three watts of dissipated (which is during active operation via Arrhenius. Since the temperature distribu-
a common value) power is leading to temperature rises of more than tion is unknown, it's only possible to calculate the mean temperature
20 K. that is allowed. Comparing the calculated mean temperature of the elec-
Fig. 5 shows the simulated temperature of a box where ECUs often tronic units for the electric vehicle with the mean temperature of the
are mounted (e.g. mounting place 5, Table 1). The temperature inside combustion engine compartment shows that the electronics of the elec-
the box rises up to 37 C, ambient temperature is 15 C. This can be ex- tric vehicle is only allowed to have roughly half the temperature of its
plained by the lack of convection cooling. By taking the Arrhenius law combustion counterpart under the premise of the same test time. Or
and the measured temperature data an acceleration factor can be calcu- in other words: under the same conditions the lifetime of an ECU
lated. mounted in an electric vehicle is drastically lower compared to the
use in conventional cars.
 
Ea
 T use T stress
t 1

Ae k
1

pi
t test t op  i 2
AT use ;i

Fig. 4. Comparison of the microstructure of a soldered interconnection (left side on a Fig. 5. Distribution of temperature in an additional housing at ambient temperature of
capacitor) in two ECUs with different age. The color has been arbitrarily choosen. 15 C with stand-by power of 3 W.

Please cite this article as: M. Krger, et al., Requirements for the application of ECUs in e-mobility originally qualied for gasoline cars, Microelec-
tronics Reliability (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2016.07.126
 M. Krger et al. / Microelectronics Reliability xxx (2016) xxxxxx
Fig. 6. Flowchart for decision guidance whether a requalication is necessary or not.
In [4] it was shown already, that passive loads like the temperature
rise after use (post-heating) have a considerable impact on the
qualication. Including passive loads into qualication tests lowers the
difference in expected lifetime between electric and combustion vehicle
loads inside the engine compartment.
7. Summary and outlook
As a result the need for requalication of some ECUs has been shown,
depending on their mounting environment. Every ECU that has longer
Please cite this article as: M. Krger, et al., Requirements for the application of ECUs in e-mobility originally qualied for gasoline cars, Microelec-
tronics Reliability (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2016.07.126
5
operation states or changed mounting conditions has to be separately in-
vestigated. Lower temperatures due to the absence of a combustion en-
gine do not at all lead to longer lifetimes. From the point of thermal
loading conditions this seems to be true. The absence of high tempera-
tures in some cases may lead to higher failure rates due to moisture. In
other cases low temperatures with high cycle counts reduce the lifetime
additionally.
So the general recommendation is to check the initial mission pro-
les the ECUs are developed for and if there are changes for the
intended use in other environments, a requalication process has to
be done in order to ensure desired reliability and safety.
Fig. 6 helps to transfer an ECU originally qualied for the use in cars
with combustion engines to an environment with changed use condi-
tions e.g. in an electric vehicle.
In general it would be helpful to include the post heating phase in
the qualication test for future ECUs. This would lead to a robustness
that better matches the requirements of electric vehicles.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank A. Bohn, J. Scheffelmeier and H.
Kukuk-Schmidt for their contribution to this work. We thank
Technische Universitt Berlin and Fraunhofer IZM for their support.
This work has been nanced by Forschungsvereinigung Antriebstechnik
e.V. (FVA) and Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
References
[1] ADAC, German Automotive Society, Pannenstatistik,, 2012.
[2] F. Dudenhffer, Studie: Ausfallsicherheit der Fahrzeugelektronik, Automotive, 2004.
[3] ZVEI, German electrical and electronic manufacturers' association, Handbook for Ro-
bustness Validation of Automotive Electrical/Electronic Modules, ZVEI, Frankfurt am
Main, Germany, 2008.
[4] U. Mller-Pschorr, et al., Robuster Entwurf von neuen Elektronikkomponenten fr
Anwendungen im Bereich Elektromobilitt (RESCAR), BMBF 16M3195, 2014.
[5] LV124, Elektrische und elektronische Komponenten in Kraftfahrzeugen bis 3,5 t -
Allgemeine Anforderungen, Prfbedingungen und Prfungen, 2013.
[7] M. Krger, Langzeitstabilitt von Mechatroniken fr den dauerhaften Einsatz unter
elektrischer Niedriglast, Forschungsvereinigung fr Antriebstechnik (FVA), Frank-
furt/Main, 2016.
[8] T. Braun, J. Bauer, K.-F. Becker, O. Hlck, H. Walter, M. vanDijk, R. Aschenbrenner, D.-
D. Lang, Inuence on humidity on reliability of plastic packages, European Micro-
electronics Packaging Conference EMPC, Friedrichshafen, 2015.
[10] J. Soa, Interconnect reliability testing, http://www.analysistech.com/downloads/
InterconnectReliability.ppt1999.